Top weather experts say that Earth is on track for several years of extreme heat that will push our planet to dangerous limits. Get ready for a hot future. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the U.K. Met Office have made new predictions that say the world will break another temperature record in the next five years. These predictions make the heat waves we’ve already seen look like they were just a taste of what’s to come.
This scary prediction comes with a somber reminder: as global temperatures rise, more extreme weather events happen. As the temperature rises, hurricanes will get stronger, droughts will get worse, and wildfires will spread quickly and damage a lot of land. Natalie Mahowald, a climate scientist at Cornell University, says that changes in global temperature may not seem like they have any real-world effects. For example, they can cause more frequent and deadly heat waves, floods, and fires, all of which put lives at risk.
The expected heat wave is also scary because we’re getting close to a critical climate threshold. There is a real chance that by the end of this decade, the average global temperature will rise by 2 degrees Celsius, which would be the first time since the middle of the 1800s. This is twice the 1.5-degree limit set by the Paris Climate Agreement. This goal is meant to stop climate change from having its worst effects. The scientists who made the new prediction think there’s a 70% chance that the average temperature will rise above 1.5 degrees over the next five years. In one of those five years, the temperature could rise by 2 degrees.
There have been signs for years, but now the truth is starting to sink in. It was more than 1.5°C warmer than pre-industrial levels around the world last year, which was once thought to be very unlikely. Leon Hermanson of the U.K. Met Office said this change was “shocking” and an alarming sign of how fast climate change is happening.
As the temperature rises, extreme weather events like stronger heatwaves that put people’s health and safety at risk will happen in many places around the world. Richard Betts, who is in charge of climate impacts research at the U.K. Met Office, says that wildfires will get bigger and hotter as the atmosphere gets warmer and drier. Also, the Arctic is warming up at a scary rate—about 3.5 times faster than the rest of the world. This is making the ice melt faster and the water level rise.
The trend probably won’t change, which is a shame. In the years after each natural El Niño event, when temperatures rise for a short time, they don’t seem to drop back down as much. Rob Jackson of Stanford says that record-high temperatures are now the new normal and that the world needs to get ready for even worse weather.
It’s clear that the next few years will be hotter than ever. If we don’t take the right steps to protect those who are most vulnerable, the results will be terrible. Now is the time to act.
