By Abdullahi lukman
There is a 70% likelihood that global temperatures between 2025 and 2029 will exceed 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, according to a new report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) released on Wednesday.
The 1.5°C threshold has symbolic importance, as it represents the target set in the 2015 Paris Agreement, where governments committed to limiting global warming in order to reduce the worst effects of climate change.
However, scientists stress that exceeding this threshold over five years does not necessarily mean the agreement has been breached.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recommends using a 20-year average to evaluate long-term temperature trends.
WMO physicist Adam Scaife noted that avoiding 1.5°C warming, even by that longer-term measure, would require rare and significant natural variability such as a strong La Niña or unusual Arctic patterns.
“It’s very unlikely that natural variability is going to come to our aid in that particular manner,” he said.
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The report also predicts an 80% chance that at least one year between 2025 and 2029 will break the current record for the warmest year, and an 86% chance that one year will exceed 1.5°C on its own.
There is also a 1% chance that a single year in that period could exceed 2°C above pre-industrial levels—once thought impossible, but now deemed “exceptionally unlikely.”
Leon Hermanson from the UK Met Office added that large volcanic eruptions could temporarily cool the planet, but such events are unpredictable.
WMO’s Director of Climate Services, Chris Hewitt, emphasized that every fraction of a degree matters and urged world leaders to take stronger action ahead of the COP30 climate summit in Brazil.
“The Paris Agreement has helped reduce projected warming. Now we must build on that progress,” he said.
The WMO calculated that global temperatures were 1.44°C above pre-industrial levels in 2024, using a blend of recent observations and future predictions to estimate a 20-year average.
While 2024 alone was 1.55°C above pre-industrial levels, this did not yet push the long-term average beyond 1.5°c.
