Thread by @richardabetts

The latest forecast from the World Meteorological Organization @WMO, led by @metoffice, suggests that over the next five years there is a 24% chance of the global average temperature exceeding 1.5C above pre-industrial levels for at least one year

carbonbrief.org/guest-post-glo…

This is a reminder of rising temperatures, but it would not mean that the long-term Paris goal to limit warming to 1.5C will have been breached

The 1.5C limit refers specifically to long-term human-caused warming and not the added effect of natural fluctuations in the climate

The blue band shows the WMO forecast for the next five years, with the darker blue shading indicating higher probabilities.

Annual global temperatures are likely to be > 1C warmer than pre-industrial in each of the coming five years – and very likely within the range 0.91-1.59C

But the usual interpretation of the Paris 1.5C target is that it does not refer to individual years - instead it refers to the long-term warming trend attributed to human influence

This is currently around 1.15C (orange line in this chart by @khaustein and colleagues

Importantly, the @WMO 5-year forecast does not bring forward the predicted date of hitting 1.5C human-caused global warming

But it does show starkly just how close we are to reaching that limit

Meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement are in real danger of slipping out of reach

NB impacts associated with 1.5C global warming would not be expected to appear suddenly in the first 1.5C year

Many types of weather extremes & other impacts are already increasing, but 1.5C is not a physical threshold when new changes suddenly kick in

theconversation.com/what-will-the-…

The impacts quantified in the IPCC’s 1.5C report relate to the long-term average at 1.5C

Also some impacts of 1.5C (eg sea level rise) would take a long time to fully emerge, even though they'd already be committed by the time warming reaches that level

carbonbrief.org/in-depth-qa-ip…

A lack of immediate climate impacts should not be used to claim that 1.5C is benign and it was all a fuss about nothing

Such claims would be disingenuous and would not reflect what the science has actually said. A rise of 1.5C is expected to lead to major impacts long-term

Also, wrongly promoting ideas of missing the Paris target & climate catastrophe in the 1st 1.5C year could be counter-productive

“Doomism” can be seen as one of the “discourses of delay”. It can actually obstruct climate action rather than motivating it

carbonbrief.org/guest-post-how…