The coming years will be the hottest ever

In 2015, in Paris, the nations of the world committed themselves to trying their best to prevent the planet warming by more than 1.5°C from its pre-industrial state. Even at the time, the goal looked ambitious. In recent years, it has come to seem almost impossible.

On May 17th the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), an arm of the United Nations, added to the gloom. It said there was a 66% chance that the world would exceed the 1.5°C threshold in at least one of the next five years. That is a big jump from its estimates of even a year ago, when the WMO assessed the likelihood at 48%. Even if the 1.5°C target is not breached, the WMO thinks it is virtually certain that one of the coming five years will be the hottest in human history. (That record is now held by 2016, which was 1.28°C warmer than the pre-industrial average.) “It’s the first time in history that this level of global temperature is within reach,” said Adam Scaife of Britain’s Met Office, whose data and calculations are central to the WMO’s report. “It shows we’re getting very, very close to the Paris threshold.”