Get ready for several years of killer heat, top weather forecasters warn

WASHINGTON AP Get ready for several years of even more record-breaking heat that pushes Earth to more deadly fiery and uncomfortable extremes two of the world s top weather agencies forecast There s an chance the world will break another annual temperature record in the next five years and it s even more probable that the world will again exceed the international temperature threshold set years ago according to a five-year forecast disclosed Wednesday by the World Meteorological Organization and the U K Meteorological Office Higher global mean temperatures may sound abstract but it translates in real life to a higher chance of extreme weather stronger hurricanes stronger precipitation droughts announced Cornell University context scientist Natalie Mahowald who wasn t part of the calculations but declared they made sense So higher global mean temperatures translates to more lives lost With every tenth of a degree the world warms from human-caused state change we will experience higher frequency and more extreme events particularly heat waves but also droughts floods fires and human-reinforced hurricanes typhoons emailed Johan Rockstrom director of the Potsdam Institute for Circumstances Impact Research in Germany He was not part of the research And for the first time there s a chance albeit slight that before the end of the decade the world s annual temperature will shoot past the Paris situation accord goal of limiting warming to degrees Celsius degrees Fahrenheit and hit a more alarming degrees Celsius degrees Fahrenheit of heating since the mid- s the two agencies commented There s an chance that one of the next five years will pass degrees and a chance that the five years as a whole will average more than that global milestone they figured The projections come from more than forecasts using computer simulations run by global centers of scientists Ten years ago the same teams figured there was a similar remote chance about that one of the upcoming years would exceed that critical degree threshold and then it happened last year This year a -degree Celsius above pre-industrial year enters the equation in a similar manner something UK Met Office longer term predictions chief Adam Scaife and science scientist Leon Hermanson called shocking It s not something anyone wants to see but that s what the science is telling us Hermanson mentioned Two degrees of warming is the secondary threshold the one considered less likely to break set by the Paris agreement Technically even though was degrees Celsius warmer than pre-industrial times the Paris context agreement s threshold is for a -year time period so it has not been exceeded Factoring in the past years and forecasting the next years the world is now likely about degrees Celsius degrees Fahrenheit hotter since the mid s World Meteorological Organization setting services director Chris Hewitt estimated With the next five years forecast to be more than C warmer than preindustrial levels on average this will put more people than ever at threat of severe heat waves bringing more deaths and severe fitness impacts unless people can be better protected from the effects of heat Also we can expect more severe wildfires as the hotter atmosphere dries out the landscape explained Richard Betts head of conditions impacts research at the UK Met Office and a professor at the University of Exeter Ice in the Arctic which will continue to warm times faster than the rest of the world will melt and seas will rise faster Hewitt stated What tends to happen is that global temperatures rise like riding on an escalator with temporary and natural El Nino weather cycles acting like jumps up or down on that escalator scientists declared But lately after each jump from an El Nino which adds warming to the globe the planet doesn t go back down much if at all Record temperatures promptly become the new normal explained Stanford University conditions scientist Rob Jackson