Two people take shelter during the heatwave in Paris
par Olivia Le Poidevin and Cecile Mantovani
Average global temperatures are “likely to break their records set in 2024 over the next five years, with those in the Arctic expected to rise faster than in other regions,” the United Nations weather agency and Britain’s Met Office said in a report released Thursday.
Global average annual temperatures near the Earth’s surface will be between 1.3°C and 1.9°C above pre-industrial levels (1850-1900), this study predicts.
In any year between 2026 and 2030, average global temperatures will exceed those of the hottest year on record, 2024, when they first exceeded 1.5°C levels. the “pre-industrial” era, she adds.
In the 2015 Paris Agreement, governments committed to doing everything possible to prevent the increase in average global temperature from exceeding 1.5°C compared to “pre-industrial” levels – the threshold beyond which we observe an intensification of climatic phenomena. extremes.
The publication of this report comes as Europe suffers from a heatwave, with temperature records for May set in several countries.
“There is “very clear evidence that the climate is getting warmer and that the global average temperature continues to rise,” Melissa Seabrook, a researcher at the British Met Office, the British weather agency, told Reuters.
Temporarily exceeding the 1.5°C threshold does not mean that the Paris Agreement has failed, because it refers to a long-term average over 20 years rather than an exceedance over a single year, continued Melissa Seabrook.
She noted, however, that the closer the world gets to this threshold, the more likely it is that it will frequently exceed it.
“The science is very clear: the window to keep the global average temperature at 1.5°C is closing quickly,” added Melissa Seabrook.
VIOLENT CLIMATE EPISODES
According to the report, winter temperatures in the Arctic in the Northern Hemisphere are expected to increase over the next five years at a rate more than three and a half times the global average, reaching around 2.8°C above the 1991-2020 baseline.
Arctic sea ice is expected to melt in March over the next five years in the Barents Sea, Bering Sea and Sea of Okhotsk.
Arctic warming could also disrupt weather systems and lead to extreme weather events, particularly in northern regions of the world, Melissa Seabrook said.
The report also predicts wetter weather in the Northern Hemisphere over the next five winters, as well as rainy periods in Northern Europe, Alaska, Siberia and the Sahel between May and September.
A strong El Niño is also predicted for winter this year, which could persist until 2027, which could contribute to global temperatures rising to potentially record levels due to the warming of the Pacific Ocean, according to Melissa Seabrook.
El Ni̱o Рand its opposite phase La Ni̱a Рare the names given to a natural variation in climate, which induces a marked variation in the temperature of the waters of the equatorial Pacific Ocean and a modification of global atmospheric circulation.
One of the most intense episodes of this type, which occurs every two to seven years and generally lasts between nine and 12 months, occurred in 2015 and 2016, causing widespread drought in Asia and a sharp decline in the production of cereals and oilseeds.
(French version by Benoit Van Overstraeten, edited by Jean-Stéphane Brosse)
