SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS RADIO) – According to a team of meteorologists worldwide, the Earth is creeping closer to a warming threshold that nations have been desperately trying to prevent. The globe now has a nearly 50-50 chance of hitting what experts consider a dangerous warming threshold within the next five years.
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The World Meteorological Organization shared in its predictions late on Monday that the globe has a 48% chance of reaching a yearly average of 1.5 degrees Celsius or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit above pre-industrial levels at least once in the next four years.
Just last year, the same forecasters released a prediction of hitting this mark closer to 40%, and a decade ago, it was at 10%, showing that we are headed in the wrong direction.
The meteorologists work out of the United Kingdom’s Meteorological Office. Their five-year predictions say there is a 93% chance the world will set a record for the hottest year ever recorded by the end of 2026.
This comes after a two-year span that saw large portions of the nation suffer from drought and wildfires, including southern California, northern Minnesota, and other areas in the Southwest United States.
California saw 4.2 million acres of land burned in 2020, which tripled the previous record held in the state, and 2021 saw numbers comparable, according to California Fire, the Guardian reported.
In total, the U.S. saw 7.2 million acres of land burn due to wildfires, according to a 2021 year-end report from the Guardian.
Aitor Bidaburu, a wildfire program manager for the U.S. Fire Administration, shared with the Guardian that the fires seen in 2021 were worrying because of the “intensity with which they burned.”
“With the conditions we saw this year and everything leading up to it – historic drought, these prolonged dry, heatwaves – everything together made it a very challenging year,” Bidaburu said.
A number of states are also predicting that this summer will look no different from last, with drought returning.
Leon Hermanson coordinated the report and worked out of the U.K. office. He said that there is no deviation from what is expected with climate change.
“We’re going to see continued warming,” Hermanson told the Associated Press.
This rise is being credited to human-made climate change and is seen as a warning sign for climate change negotiations and science, according to a team of 11 different forecasters for the organization.
The predictions also said that the megadrought in the Southwest U.S. is expected to continue, with no signs of it ending over the next four years.
The team looked at regional and global climate predictions on a yearly and seasonal time scale to come to their conclusions. They then based that on long-term averages using computer simulations.
The globe has already warmed about 1.1 degrees Celsius since the late 1800s, and the United Nations released a report in 2018 that if that number hits 1.5 degrees, the world would see dramatic and dangerous effects.
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