UN forecasts two in three chance of the world hitting climate change danger point

Experts say average temperatures could reach more than one-point-five degrees above pre-industrial levels, ITV News' Martin Stew reports

There’s a two-in-three chance the world will reach a temperature which could accelerate the devastating impacts of climate change.

It's likely in the next five years the earth's temperature will have increased by 1.5 degrees Celsius, a new World Meteorological Organisation report forecasts.

But the dangerous temperatures should not last long, the United Nations weather agency said on Wednesday.

This is because scientists expect it to be the temporary burst of heat will come from El Nino - a meteorological phenomenon which causes the Pacific ocean to warm and then impacts the weather across the world.

It's likely the temperatures will then slip back down a bit.

The 2015 Paris climate agreement set an increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius as the danger mark, with countries pledging to try to prevent that much long-term warming if possible.

Scientists in a special 2018 United Nations report said going past that point would be have drastic consequences with more death, destruction and damage to global ecosystems.

“It won’t be this year probably. Maybe it’ll be next year or the year after” that a year averages 1.5 degrees celsius, said report lead author Leon Hermanson of the Met Office.

But climate scientists said what’s likely to happen in the next five years isn’t the same as failing the global goal.

WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said: "This report does not mean that we will permanently exceed the 1.5C level specified in the Paris Agreement which refers to long-term warming over many years.

"However, WMO is sounding the alarm that we will breach the 1.5C level on a temporary basis with increasing frequency."

“A single year doesn’t really mean anything,” Hermanson said. Scientists usually use 30-year averages.

Want a quick and expert briefing on the biggest news stories? Listen to our latest podcasts to find out What You Need To Know...

Those 66% odds of a single year hitting that threshold in five years have increased from 48% last year, 40% the year before, 20% in 2020 and 10% about a decade ago.

The WMO report is based on calculations by 11 different climate science centres across the globe.

The world has been inching closer to the 1.5-degree threshold due to human-caused climate change for years.

The temporary warming makes it “possible for us to see a single year exceeding 1.5C a full decade before the long-term average warming driven by human emissions of greenhouse gases does,” said climate scientist Zeke Hausfather of the tech company Stripe and Berkeley Earth, who wasn’t part of the WMO report.

“We don’t expect the longer-term average to pass 1.5C until the early-to-mid 2030s,” he added.

But each year at or near 1.5C matters.

“We see this report as more of a barometer of how we’re getting close, because the closer you get to the threshold, the more noise bumping up and down is going to bump you over the threshold randomly,” Hermanson said in an interview.

And he said the more random bumps over the mark occur, the closer the world actually gets to the threshold.

The El Nino cycle is the main cause in the temperature changes.

The world is coming off a record-tying three years of La Nina - the cooling version of El Nino which has continued for three years of El Nino

Scientists say we are on the verge of an El Nino and it is predicted to be strong.

The La Nina somewhat flattened the trend of human-caused warming so that the world hasn’t broken the annual temperature mark since 2016, the last El Nino, super-sized one, Hermanson said.

That means a 98% chance of breaking the 2016 annual global temperature record between now and 2027, the report said.

There’s also a 98% chance that the next five years will be the hottest five years on record, the report said.

Because of the shift from La Nina to El Nino “where there were floods before, there will be droughts and where there were droughts before there might be floods,” Hermanson said.