El Niño and global warming set to make next five years the warmest on record, WMO report reveals

Remember that wee old 1.5°C limit we were advised to deathly avoid? Remember when it felt like a distant goal, with plenty of time to fix things? Yeah, it's already underway.

If this feels like a procrastinator's worst nightmare, it really is. Between supremely unnecessary debates around the "climate change hoax", to all the gruelling greenwashing major polluters have partaken in to appear climate-conscious, we've wasted too much time — more than we could actually afford.

Predictably, this is already all but being reflected on a global scale currently. Recent AI predictions had forecast the Earth to begin breaching 1.5°C between 2033-2035. However, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) has decreed a devastating likelihood that we might not even get that decade-worth of breathing room.

According to a new WMO report, the likelihood of annual average near-surface global temperatures hitting the foreboding 1.5°C limit between 2023 and 2027 has skyrocketed to 66%, a figure we desperately hoped to avoid.

For context, this temporary exceedance over pre-industrial levels statistic stood at a timid 10% just two years back, between 2017 and 2021 — around the time Greta Thunberg helped blow the topic into mainstream focus. When 196 parties at the UN Climate Change Conference first adopted the Paris Agreement in 2015, it was basically nil.

One of next five years to be the warmest on record

There's bad news and slightly less bad news. While this breach is unlikely to be permanent over the next five years (only a 32% chance), we know with almost certainty that at least one of those five years will be one of the warmest we've ever witnessed.

A similar story has been forecasted for the five years as a whole, which is set to be the warmest on record, no doubt due to the scathing intervention of the El Niño weather pattern that will likely reclaim its sweltering throne within the next few months.

"A warming El Niño is expected to develop in the coming months, and this will combine with human-induced climate change to push global temperatures into uncharted territory," alarmed WMO Secretary-General Prof Petteri Taalas.

"This will have far-reaching repercussions for health, food security, water management and the environment. We need to be prepared," he laments.

As most know by now, the Paris Agreement was sort of a last-ditch international effort to get the increasingly warming planet in order. Most of the world's nations set long-term goals to slash emissions and contribute to the ever-growing climate problem substantially.

However, with a diminishing timeframe to prevent disasters, we might have to delegate even more drastic measures to circumvent the problem. Imagining the glass half-full to make worthwhile reparations has proven more Herculean than ever before.

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