Earth is hot and getting hotter: UN warns next 5 years likely to smash records

In the next five years, the Earth is overwhelmingly likely to surge again and again past the international climate threshold set as safe and shatter its hottest-year record along the way, according to new United Nations climate projections.

The World Meteorological Organization also forecasts an overheating Arctic that warms nearly 1.66 degrees Celsius (3 Fahrenheit) between now and 2030 and a dangerous drought with potential wildfires for the Amazon, a crucial part of Earth’s natural defences to lessen human-caused climate change.

A hotter globe from the burning of coal, oil and gas means more extreme weather including floods, droughts and heatwaves, scientists said.

The projections by the UN climate agency and the United Kingdom’s Meteorological Office said there was a 75 per cent chance that the average global temperature between 2026 and 2030 would exceed 1.5 degrees since pre-industrial times. That threshold was the agreed-upon limit of warming – averaged over 20 years – set in 2015 by the Paris climate agreement.

A UN science report a few years later detailed how exceeding that 1.5 mark means more likely death, danger and species loss. Even though it was only a few tenths of a degree, some of the planet’s ecosystems, such as coral and glaciers, cannot handle the strain.

There was a 91 per cent chance that at least one of the next five years would shoot past the 1.5 degree threshold and an 86 per cent chance that one of those years would smash the record for Earth’s hottest year set in 2024, the WMO report said.