Alarming climate change: Earth heads for its tipping point as it could reach +1.5 °C over the next 5 years, WMO finds in the latest study
Last year, 2020, the global average surface temperature was the warmest on record. But it could get even warmer until 2025. According to the latest study by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), Earth’s average temperature will likely reach its tipping point in climate change. The anomaly of +1.5 °C is likely in the next 5 years.
2020 had the globally averaged temperature of 1.02 °C (1.84 °F) warmer than the baseline 1951-1980 mean, according to scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York. 2020 edged out 2016 by a very small amount, within the margin of error of the analysis, making the years effectively tied for the warmest year on record.
But now, there is a 90 % likelihood that at least one of the next five years, including 2021, becoming the warmest on record. The high-latitude regions and the Sahel* are likely to be wetter than normal, as well tropical cyclone activity is very likely to be increased compared to the recent past (the period between 1981 and 2010).
*Note: The Sahel is the ecoclimatic and biogeographic realm of transition in Africa between the Sahara to the north and the Sudanian savanna to the south. Having a semi-arid climate, it stretches across the south-central latitudes of Northern Africa between the Atlantic Ocean and the Red Sea.
