Four degrees by 2060, Met Office warns

Scientists at the Met Office’s Hadley Centre believe catastrophic increases in temperature could occur as early as 2060 if global greenhouse gas emissions are not cut soon.

The findings are much starker than the UN's official 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, which warned temperatures were likely to rise 4 °C by 2100.

Dr Richard Betts, head of Climate Impacts at the Met Office Hadley Centre, who presented the new findings to 130 international scientists and policy specialists at the University of Oxford this month, said: “Four degrees of warming, averaged over the globe, translates into even greater warming in many regions, along with major changes in rainfall. If greenhouse gas emissions are not cut soon, we could see major climate changes within our own lifetimes.”

The Met Office report is the first to consider the global consequences of climate change beyond 2 °C and warns that in some areas warming could reach 10 °C or more. The consequences of this would be droughts in some areas of the world, flooding in other areas and severe water shortages for about half of the world’s population.

“Together these impacts will have very large consequences for food security, water availability and health,” said Dr Betts. “However, it is possible to avoid these dangerous levels of temperature rise by cutting greenhouse gas emissions. If global emissions peak within the next decade and then decrease rapidly it may be possible to avoid at least half of the four degrees of warming.”