Alarming Heat Barrier Will Be Broken By 2025 At Current Pace

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has published a recent report on 27th May. It predicts that a significant heat barrier is going to be broken by 2025. The report is produced by the Met Office of the United Kingdom. It states that at least once in the coming 5 years, there is a two-fifth chance of the global temperature being 1.5C higher than the era before industry (1850-1900).

This means that achieving the promise in the Paris Climate Agreement of 2015 to limit the global rise in temperature to 1.5C by the end of the century is much more difficult. The report by the WMO looks at 2021 and the range of years between 2021 and 2025. Furthermore, one of these years is going to be the hottest recorded years.

Read: Take A Peek At What Awaits Us If We Don’t Do Anything About Climate Change

The Heat Barrier Is A Clock Ticking Away

Presently, the hottest year was 2016, with 2019 and 2020 both in second place. Moreover, the present global temperature average is already 1.2C higher than what it was before the 20th century. The recent report indicates that this average temperature will range from 0.9 to 1.8C higher than in the pre-20th century. A previous report had set the date of the heat barrier-breaking as 2027, but this WMO report indicates that it is happening faster.

As such, this heat barrier being broken is both scary and important as we continue to battle climate change. In the past few years, greenhouse gas emissions have increased overall when they should have decreased. As a result, the previous 5 years were the hottest on record.

By November 2021, countries were going to set improved climate goals for the nations. However, the economic crash due to the pandemic has led most countries to use fossil fuels like never before. As such, a green recovery globally is in tatters.

Read: Climate Change Has Been Amplifying The Already Existing Big Problems

The pandemic’s silver lining is the reduction of CO2 emissions globally. But it needs to be increased by at least ten times to prevent climate change. Furthermore, the world would need to have lockdowns per 2 years to meet the goals set in the Paris Agreement.

As such, the heat barrier record is only an indicator of how close we are to losing it all. The window of opportunity to tackle this is almost gone already.