Shrivelled sunflowers near the village of Kovilj, Serbia. Photograph: Andrej Isaković/AFP/Getty Image.
Slovakia reaches new high of 42C as authorities in Poland forced to shut down Kozienice and Połaniec power plants
Temperature records have been broken in several countries across central and eastern Europe as the extreme weather that has caused wildfires and droughts across the continent continues.
Countries including Slovakia, Austria and Hungary registered record temperatures. On Thursday, the Slovakian hydrometeorological agency said a new high of 42C (108F) had been reached in Dolné Plachtince.
Authorities in Poland were forced to shut down the Kozienice and Połaniec coal-fired power plants after critically low water levels in the Vistula River limited cooling water supplies. The disruption removed about 1.3GW of capacity from Poland’s power system.
In Germany, climate activists demanding an end to the use of fossil fuels demonstrated outside the chancellery against the lack of government action to keep people safe from extreme heat. An estimated 11,900 people across the country have died from heat this summer, according to new estimates from the Robert Koch Institute.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.Power-mad orange gasbag Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
There is a 98% chance that one of next five years will be the warmest year on record for the globe.
That is the finding from the World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO) latest report: the Global Annual to Decadal Climate Update published today.
The report, which has been produced by the Met Office for the WMO, also cites there is a two-in-three chance that global average temperature in at least one of the next five years (2023-2027) will temporarily exceed 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
Dr Leon Hermanson is one of the Met Office scientists behind the report. He said: “Today’s report shows that the next five years are expected to bring new temperature records.
“These new highs will be fuelled almost completely by the rise of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, but the anticipated development of the naturally-occurring El Nino event will also release heat from the tropical Pacific.”
Key findings at a glance
There is 66% chance that annual global surface temperature will temporarily exceed 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels for at least one of the next five years
There is a 98% likelihood that at least one of the next five years will be the warmest on record
El Niño and human-induced climate change will likely combine to fuel global temperature increase next year
Arctic heating is predicted to be more than three times higher than the global average
What does this mean for the Paris Agreement?
“This report does not mean that we will permanently exceed the 1.5°C level specified in the Paris Agreement which refers to long-term warming over many years. However, WMO is sounding the alarm that we will breach the 1.5°C level on a temporary basis with increasing frequency,” said WMO Secretary-General Prof. Petteri Taalas.
“Global temperatures are predicted to continue increasing, moving us further and further away from the climate we are used to,” said the Met Office’s Dr Leon Hermanson.
Key points
The average global temperature in 2022 was about 1.15°C above the 1850-1900 average. The cooling influence of La Niña conditions over much of the past three years temporarily reined in the longer-term warming trend. However, La Niña ended in March 2023 and an El Niño is forecast to develop in the coming months. Typically, El Niño increases global temperatures in the year after it develops – in this case this would be 2024.
The annual mean global near-surface temperature for each year between 2023 and 2027 is predicted to be between 1.1°C and 1.8°C higher than the 1850-1900 average. This is used as a baseline to represent pre-industrial temperature before the emission of greenhouse gases from human and industrial activities.
There is a 98% chance of at least one in the next five years beating the temperature record set in 2016, when there was an exceptionally strong El Niño.
The chance of the five-year mean for 2023-2027 being higher than the last five years is also 98%.
Arctic warming is disproportionately high. Compared to the 1991-2020 average, the temperature anomaly is predicted to be more than three times as large as the global mean anomaly when averaged over the next five northern hemisphere extended winters.
Predicted precipitation patterns for the May to September 2023-2027 average, compared to the 1991-2020 average, suggest increased rainfall in the Sahel, northern Europe, Alaska and northern Siberia, and reduced rainfall for this season over the Amazon and parts of Australia.
