For first time, global temperature breaches 1.5C warming threshold in first half of June

For the first time, the global mean temperature breached the 1.5 degrees Celsius mark—the target set by the UN to stave off climate disruptions on Earth.

The global temperature has broken the pre-industrial levels several times in past, but that has happened only in winter and spring, where deviations are more pronounced.

This is the first time that the global mean temperature has gone past 1.5C in the summer.

“Global mean temperature exceeded 1.5 degrees threshold during the first days of June. Monitoring how often and for how long these breaches occur is more important than ever, if we are to avoid more severe consequences of the climate crisis,” the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecast (ECMWF) tweeted on Thursday.

“This threshold was first exceeded in December 2015, and then repeatedly in the northern hemisphere winters and springs of 2016 and 2020.”

Paris Agreement

The Paris Agreement, which came into force in 2016, set out long-term goals to guide countries to reduce gas emissions and limit the global temperature increase in this century to 2 degrees, while working towards a greater limit of 1.5C.

Hottest five years, 1.5c breach likely: UN

However, the goals mentioned in the Paris Agreement refer only to long-term warming, that is the global temperatures over a period of 20 to 30 years on an average. Nowhere has it mentioned about daily or even annual global temperatures.

WMO report

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) published a report in May that highlighteda 66 per cent likelihood of the annual average global temperature in 2023–2027 going past more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels for at least one year.

Unlike the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s climate projections, which are based on future greenhouse gas emissions, the WMO’s predictions are made on long-range weather forecasts.

With the regular occurrence of El Niño, the agency believes that there is good reason to expect periods in the coming 12 months during which the global-mean air temperature again exceeds pre-industrial levels by more than 1.5⁰C.

The WMO report further said that there is a 98 per cent likelihood that at least one of the next five years, and the five-year period as a whole, will be the warmest on record.

There is also a 32 per cent chance that the five-year mean will exceed the 1.5°C threshold set in the Paris Agreement, it said.

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