The Met Office, the UK’s national weather service, expects 2020 to be another of the hottest years on record. Global temperatures are forecasted to be over 1.1°C above the pre-industrial average.
The forecast for this coming year was made according to observations of trends over recent years – which have been a series of years with temperatures over 1°C above pre-industrial levels. They all bear the “clean fingerprint” of human-induced global warming, according to the meteorologists.
With the continuation of the trend, 2020 will likely contain unforeseeable events like significant volcanic eruptions, which on the plus side would create a cooling effect from the dust spewed into the atmosphere.
The meteorologists also predicted that the intense natural warming event El Niño will not be happening next year. This is good because the weather system (which takes place in the Pacific) can result in remarkably high temperatures. El Niño occurred in 1998, and it made it the warmest year ever since records began in 1850, that is until 2005 took its place.
Now, 2016 is the hottest year on record. There was also an El Niño effect that year. This weather phenomenon has fuelled false claims that climate science was wrong and that global warming was not occurring. However, we now know this is inaccurate because all the years since 2016 have been so hot they’ve nearly matched the record, but there has been no El Niño effect to blame – only human-induced climate change.
Prof Adam Scaife, the Met Office’s head of long-range prediction, said:
Natural events, such as El Niño-induced warming in the Pacific, influence the climate system. In the absence of El Niño, this forecast gives a clear picture of the strongest factor causing temperatures to rise: greenhouse gas emissions.
The scientific warning is that warming shouldn’t exceed 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels to avoid damaging effects on the planet’s climate. If the forecast for 2020 is accurate, and the temperature will reach 1.1°C above pre-industrial degrees, the world will be very close to the brink of climate breakdown.
To put things into perspective, the first year in which temperatures were over 1°C above the average from 1850 to 1900 was 2015, and its been above ever since. Meaning, the rate of change has been rapid, and if the trend continues, we’ll likely breach the 1.5°C threshold within two decades easily.
The scary thing is, greenhouse gas emissions are only rising and show no sign of diminishing. The UN published research just this year, which shows the annual carbon emissions are now 4% higher than they were in 2015 – the year the Paris Agreement on climate change was signed. Since then, emissions should have gone down, and the fact that they haven’t is a terrible sign.
