Summer 2018 has been nothing short of brutal. Record temperatures have been set worldwide and we’ve seen little relief.
Bad news: None is on the way for the next five years, either, according to a new forecast.
Forecasters say the period will be ‘anomalously warm’ — and that’s on top of any global warming we humans are responsible for.
The study, which was published on Nature magazine’s website, postulates that the planet’s natural warming trend (which excludes the impact of greenhouse gasses introduced by humans) is set for a change.
For most of this decade, they say, factors such as oscillations in the oceans, have slowed down that natural warming. However, those factors are changing and that could actually accelerate the warming process, meaning more record temperatures are on the way.
This comes as Earth has already experienced the four hottest years in its history. And one researcher that tracks climate change at UC Berkeley believes it’s unlikely we’ll see temperatures as cool as they were in 2014 ever again.
The scientists in charge of this study note that while it’s likely we’ll see the acceleration of heating — there’s a 58% chance Earth’s overall temperature will be anomalously warm over the next five years, and a 69% chance Earth’s oceans will be — it’s not an absolute certainty.
The study also does not factor in the atmospheric condition known as El Niño, which also impacts temperatures.
Still, the scientists who conducted the research say it’s probably a good idea to stock up on shorts.
“What we found is that for the next five years or so, there is a high likelihood of an anomalously warm climate compared to anomalously cold,” Florian Sevellec, co-author of the study and a scientist at France’s National Center for Scientific Research, told the Washington Post.
