Earth is likely to cross a key climate threshold in two years

A new World Meteorological Organization report spells the end of the goal to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.

Seven years ago, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted that the world wouldn’t warm 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels until 2040.

Then two years ago, the group predicted the world would pass that threshold between 2030 and 2035.

Now, new data from the World Meteorological Organization released Wednesday indicates that the Earth will cross this point in just two years.

The accelerated timeline is due to higher-than-expected temperatures over the past few years, diminishing air pollution that cooled the Earth, and greenhouse gas emissions that continue to rise globally despite the growth of renewable energy.

And it means that irreversible tipping points in the climate system — like the melting of Arctic ice sheets or the wide-scale collapse of coral reefs — are closer at hand than scientists previously believed.

The WMO report predicted five more years of sky-high temperatures — which, combined with hotter conditions driven by the El Niño weather pattern, mean that the planet is poised to officially warm 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) over a sustained period by 2027.

“There is no way, barring geoengineering, to prevent global temperatures from going over 1.5 degrees,” said Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist and the climate research lead at the payments company Stripe. Geoengineering refers to deliberately cooling the planet, for example by injecting aerosols into the atmosphere — a practice that is hotly debated.

Nearly a decade ago, delegates from more than 190 nations agreed in Paris to pursue “efforts to limit the temperature increase” to 1.5 degrees Celsius, after small-island nations protested that higher temperatures would sink their land beneath rising waves.

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