Scientists warn of record temperatures and stronger storms due to climate change

According to a five-year forecast released Wednesday by the World Meteorological Organization and the U.K. Meteorological Office, there’s an 80% chance the world will break another annual temperature record in the next five years, CBS News writes.

As noted, it’s even more probable that the world will again exceed the international temperature threshold set 10 years ago.

“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,” said Cornell University climate scientist Natalie Mahowald, who wasn’t part of the calculations but said they made sense. “So higher global mean temperatures translates to more lives lost.”

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 climate accord goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius and hit a more alarming 2 degrees Celsius of heating since the mid-1800s, the two agencies said.