For the first time in history, the global mean temperature crossed the key 1.5 degrees Celsius limit at the start of June, 2023. According to the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecast (ECMWF), this is the first time that the target was breached in the summer months.
“Global mean temperature exceeded the 1.5 degrees threshold during the first days of June. Monitoring how often and for how long these breaches occur is more important than ever, if we are to avoid more severe consequences of the climate crisis,” the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecast (ECMWF) tweeted on Thursday, June 16
https://twitter.com/ECMWF/status/1669282752804388865
Previously, the mean global temperature exceeded pre-industrial averages by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius several times, but only in the winter and spring months.
According to the ECMWF, the threshold was first exceeded in December 2015 and then it kept recurring in the Northern Hemisphere in the spring months of 2016 and 2020.
As per the 2015 Paris Agreement, which came into force in 2016, long-term goals were set to guide countries to reduce gas emissions and limit the global temperature increase in this century to 2 degrees Celsius while working towards the greater limit of 1.5 degree Celsius.
If current efforts to combat climate change remain unchanged, the Earth could experience a temperature increase of 2.7 degrees Celsius by the end of this century, according to a recent study conducted by researchers at the Global Systems Institute, University of Exeter, and Nanjing University.
Since then, 1.5 degree Celsius has become the key threshold limit and an important target of global climate change negotiations among the United Nations member countries.
However, the Paris Agreement considered only the long-term warming goals over a period of 20-30 years on an average. It failed to mention the daily or even annual global temperature increase.
Experts believe that the short-term breaches of these thresholds are now inevitable, as in most of the pathways, to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement.
In May, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) published a report highlighting that there is a 66 percent chance that between 2023 and 2027, the annual average global temperature may go beyond the 1.5 degree Celsius limit.
So far, the warmest year has been 2016, when global mean temperatures were over 1.28 degrees Celsius. According to the prediction, the next warmest year will leave this number behind.
The WMO’s predictions are based on long-range weather forecasts unlike the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s climate predictions, which take future greenhouse gas emissions into account.
(Edited by : Shoma Bhattacharjee)
First Published: Jun 16, 2023 7:02 PM IST
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