We will experience the hottest year ever recorded within 5 years, assures the WMO!

While the rise in global temperature has already reached +1.15°C since the pre-industrial period, the WMO announces, this Wednesday, May 17, 2023, that between 2023 and 2027, “ there is a 66% probability that the annual mean temperature near the Earth’s surface will exceed pre-industrial values ​​by 1.5°C for at least one year. It is 98% likely that at least one of the next five years and the five-year period as a whole will be the warmest on record.”. It is even possible that the symbolic bar of +1.5°C, considered as a threshold not to be crossed on pain of numerous irreversible consequences, will be exceeded until it reaches +1.8°C by 2027: “ the probability that the five-year average temperature exceeds the threshold of +1.5°C is only 32%. Nevertheless, the probability of a temporary overshoot of the +1.5°C threshold has steadily increased since 2015, when it was close to zero. For the years between 2017 and 2021, this probability was 10%”.

The next two years are likely to break all heat records

The hottest year recorded so far remains 2016, which was marked by a very strong El Niño phenomenon. But this anomalyanomaly warm, which takes place in phases (alternating with La Niña, its homologyhomology cold) has consequences that manifest themselves over several years. In general, the maximum effect of El Niño on the weather reportweather report world does not take place until the following year. If El Niño sets in during this summer of 2023 as expected, its impact will therefore be maximum during 2024. The temperature record set in 2016, a year marked by an exceptionally strong El Niño episode, is 98% likely to be broken for at least one of the next five years. says the WMO. The consequences of El Niño will therefore certainly be minimal in 2023, but very marked in 2024, or even in 2025: the cumulative effect of warming linked to greenhouse gas emissions and to El Niño will undoubtedly produce heat records in series.

While temperatures will continue to rise all over the world, more or less quickly, side precipitationprecipitationthe trend will be radically different from one region of the world to another: compared to the average for the period 1991-2020, the average rainfall pattern between May and September for the period 2023-2027 shows an increase in rainfall in the Sahel, northern Europe, Alaska and northern of Siberia as well as a decrease in precipitation over the basin of theAmazonAmazon and parts of Australia”.

After the forecast, it’s time to prepare

The World Meteorological Organization is the authoritative body of the United Nations on matters relating to weather, climateclimate and water and the objective of its reports is to allow the various nations to anticipate the possible consequences. The accentuation of the heatheat over the next 5 years will have repercussions on health, food security, water management and the environment ” And ” we have to prepare ourselves”, warns the WMO Secretary-General, Mr. Petteri Taalas.