François Counillon, one of the Nansen Center researchers on the NorCPM team: “This WMO climate prediction initiative has a great societal impact because it informs on the near future climate and accounts for both natural variability and the response to climate change. Such a coordinated experiment allows us to better quantify uncertainty in our forecast.”
According to the latest update, global temperatures are predicted to continue to rise. The coming five years (2023-2027) are the subject of investigation, and record highs for air temperatures are on the horizon.
We will, with a 66 % likelihood, see the annual average near-surface global temperatures rise over the 1.5 °C threshold compared to pre-industrial levels, at least in one of the coming five years. The pre-industrial average is defined as the global temperature during 1850-1900, before human and industrial activities began releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
With a 98 % likelihood, at least one of the coming five years will be the warmest on record, beating the extreme temperatures from 2016, which were partly caused by a very strong El Niño event. The latest update by the WMO also forecasts the development of another El Niño event throughout this year. El Niño is a weather phenomenon that causes an increase in global temperatures the year after it develops – 2024 is therefore a candidate to break the 2016 temperature records.
