The past 10 years have been the warmest on record, characterised by devastating and extreme weather. Now, a report warns that climate change really is spiralling out of control.
Predictions by the World Health Organization (WHO) show temperatures are expected to continue at or near record levels for the next five years. If this trend continues, there will be even more harmful heatwaves, severe rainfall and floods, intense droughts, melting ice and rising sea levels, experts say.
And Earth is edging closer to the threshold considered a critical tipping point for catastrophic climate consequences, they warned.
WMO Deputy Secretary-General Ko Barrett said: ‘We have just experienced the 10 warmest years on record.
‘Unfortunately, this WMO report provides no sign of respite over the coming years.
‘And this means that there will be a growing negative impact on our economies, our daily lives, our ecosystems and our planet.’ In January, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) confirmed that 2024 was the warmest since records began, reaching 1.55°C above pre-industrial levels.
At the time, scientists said the data revealed the Earth is ‘profoundly ill’, with ‘many of the vital signs sounding alarms’. The new report, released today, shows there is an 80 per cent probability that at least one year in the next five will be even hotter.
And, for the first time ever, there’s a chance we could reach 2°C of warming – which would lead to significant and potentially irreversible changes across the planet. The Paris Agreement, an international treaty on climate change, was signed in 2016 by nearly 200 leaders from around the world.
One commitment was to try and limit global temperature rises to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, which refers to the period between 1850-1900. The target is generally accepted to refer to a 20-year average, rather than a single year. Last year was the first time 1.5°C warming had been recorded – and experts now say there is a 70 per cent chance that the next five years will average out to the same figure.
Prof. Adam Scaife, Head of Long Range Forecasting at the Met Office, said: ‘Previous forecasts for a single year above 1.5 degrees proved to be correct when 2024 exceeded this level.
‘This new forecast is for even higher levels of global temperature and shows clear regional effects on weather patterns around the world.’
While the chance of the next five years averaging out to a 2°C increase is incredibly slim – around a one percent probability – it is the first time it has been possible. ‘These latest predictions show we really are very close now to having 1.5°C years commonplace,’ Professor Scaife said.
‘We had one in 2024 but they are increasing in frequency, and we are going to see more of those. ‘There is even a chance now – and it’s the first time we’ve ever seen such an event in our computer predictions – of a 2°C year.
‘That is completely unprecedented. There’s a one percent chance of seeing that, but it’s now possible. ‘It was effectively impossible a few years ago.’
Other predictions for the next five years include that the Arctic will warm to 2.4°C above average during the November to March, there will be further reductions in sea ice concentrations and drier than average conditions during May to September in the Amazon.
Here in the UK we could expect to see wetter winters, on average, as well as more frequent heatwaves.
The scientific community has repeatedly warned that warming of more than 1.5°C risks unleashing far more severe climate change impacts and extreme weather and every fraction of a degree of warming matters.
Currently, the team predicts that the average warming for the 20 years between 2015 and 2034 will be 1.44°C.
‘The trajectory we’re on is at the upper end of what we projected years ago,’ Prof. Scaife added. ‘We’re not in a situation where the models are running away, but we’re at the upper end of what we predicted.’
The team said it’s currently ‘too early’ to gauge average temperatures for this year, but that it’s currently ‘tracking warm’. ‘It will be up there in the top warmest years, but unlikely to be out-of-the-park records,’ Dr Leon Hermanson, Senior Scientists in Monthly to Decadal Prediction at the Met Office, said.
While 2024 was the hottest in a 175-year-record, data showed greenhouse gas emissions and sea level rises also reached a new high. At the time, the WMO warned the effects of climate change are likely to be felt for hundreds, if not thousands of years to come. Their report found that the global CO2 concentration hit 420 parts per million (ppm) last year.
That is 2.3 ppm higher than in 2022 and 151 percent of the level before industrialisation started adding large amounts of CO2 into the air. As humans produce ever more emissions, this has caused a rapid shift in the Earth’s climate which is far faster than any previous natural changes. Greenhouse gases like CO2 act like a thermal blanket over Earth, preventing heat from the sun from escaping back into space.
In 2024 ocean temperatures were also at their highest level in the 65 years in which they have been recorded. The rate of ocean warming in the two decades from 2005 to 2024 was more than double that in the period between 1960 and 2005.
Antarctic sea ice reached its second-lowest extent ever recorded, and global sea levels were the highest since 1993
Global climate predictions
* 80 percent chance that at least one of the next five years will exceed 2024 as the warmest on record
* 86 percent chance that at least one of next five years will be more than 1.5°C above the 1850-1900 average
* 70 percent chance that 5-year average warming for 2025-2029 will be more than 1.5 °C
