Met Office: global warming could exceed 1.5C within five years

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/06/met-office-global-warming-could-exceed-1-point-5-c-in-five-years?fbclid=IwAR2hc6kpXkeYmjYd3fvn0kn_rJD_EEuSkN6ZgNqRMYD4R9zSq9ElIwpdH6k

Jonathan Watts
Wed 6 Feb 2019 11.00 EST
Last modified on Wed 6 Feb 2019 16.00 EST

Global warming could temporarily hit 1.5C [2.7F] above pre-industrial levels for the first time between now and 2023, according to a long-term forecast by the Met Office.

Meteorologists said there was a 10% chance of a year in which the average temperature rise exceeds 1.5C, which is the lowest of the two Paris agreement targets set for the end of the century.
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Until now, the hottest year on record was 2016, when the planet warmed 1.11C above pre-industrial levels, but the long-term trend is upward.

Man-made greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are adding 0.2C of warming each decade but the incline of temperature charts is jagged due to natural variation: hotter El Niño years zig above the average, while cooler La Ninã years zag below.

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Climatologists stressed this did not mean the world had broken the Paris agreement 80 years ahead of schedule because international temperature targets are based on 30-year averages.

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“Breaching 1.5C of global warming does indeed mean that we failed to limit warming to that ‘safe’ level, but not that our understanding of a safe level of climate change has suddenly changed and climate change should go unchecked,” said Rogelj, who was was a coordinating lead author on the UN report. “Every tenth of a degree matters. So if 1.5C of global warming would be exceeded for whatever reason, this would be a call for steeper emissions reductions.”