“A single year of exceedance above 1.5 °C does not mean we have breached the iconic threshold of the Paris Agreement, but it does reveal that we are edging ever closer to a situation where 1.5 °C could be exceeded for an extended period,” warned Dr Leon Hermanson of Met Office who led the present report.
“For as long as we continue to emit greenhouse gases, temperatures will continue to rise. And alongside that, our oceans will continue to become warmer and more acidic, sea ice and glaciers will continue to melt, sea level will continue to rise and our weather will become more extreme. Arctic warming is disproportionately high and what happens in the Arctic affects all of us,” said Prof. Taalas.
We will know the final average global temperature for 2021 on May 18, when the final State of the Global Climate report for 2021 will be released.
However, according to the provisional WMO report, the global average temperature in 2021 was 1.1 °C above the pre-industrial baseline.
The annual mean global near-surface temperature for each year between 2022 and 2026 is predicted by the present annual update to be between 1.1 °C and 1.7 °C higher than preindustrial levels.
The Arctic temperature anomaly, compared to the 1991-2020 average, is predicted to be more than three times as large as the global mean anomaly when averaged over the next five northern hemisphere extended winters.
As for precipitation (rainfall), its average pattern is predicted for a period between November 2022-23 to 2026-27 compared to 1991-2000 average, it would increase in the tropics and reduced in the subtropics, consistent with the patterns expected from climate warming.
For 2022, an increased chance of drier conditions is predicted over southwestern Europe and southwestern North America, and wetter conditions in northern Europe, the Sahel, north-east Brazil, and Australia.
Prediction for May to September 2022-2026 is an increased chance of wetter condition in Sahel, northern Europe, Alaska and northern Siberia, and drier conditions over the Amazon.
(IPA Service)
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