Climate danger: UN forecasts 2 in 3 chance of briefly hitting key heat limit soon

FILE - Steam and exhaust rise from different companies on a cold winter day on Jan. 6, 2017, in Oberhausen, Germany. (Photo by Lukas Schulze/Getty Images) There’s a two-out-of-three chance within the next five years that the world will temporarily reach the internationally accepted global temperature threshold for limiting the worst effects of climate change, a new World Meteorological Organization report forecasts.It likely would only be a fleeting and less worrisome flirtation with the agreed-upon climate danger point, the United Nations weather agency said Wednesday.

That’s because scientists expect a temporary burst of heat from an El Nino will supercharge human-caused warming from the burning of coal, oil and gas to new heights and then slip back down a bit.The 2015 Paris climate agreement set 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) as a global guardrail in atmospheric warming, with countries pledging to try to prevent that much long-term warming if possible.

Scientists in a special 2018 United Nations report said going past that point would be drastically and dangerously different with more death, destruction and damage to global ecosystems."It won’t be this year probably.

Maybe it’ll be next year or the year after" that a year averages 1.5 degrees Celsius, said report lead author Leon Hermanson, a climate scientist at the United Kingdom’s Met Office.But climate scientists said what's likely to happen in the next five years isn't the same as failing the global goal."This report does not mean that we will permanently exceed the 1.5C level specified in the Paris Agreement which refers to long-term warming over many years.