The last eight years' record-breaking temperatures will figure among the coolest within three or four decades as global temperatures climb, even if planet-warming emissions drop quickly, a UN report said Monday.
"The warmest years we have experienced to date will be among the coolest within a generation," Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at Imperial College London and lead author of the UN's climate advisory panel said.
Severe climate impacts are coming more quickly at lower levels of global warming than previously expected, the UN also said, warning the world will see its first full year at 1.5C above pre-industrial levels in the early 2030s.
In a report synthesizing its major findings over the last six years, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said there is also a 50-50 chance that "by 2030, global surface temperature in any individual year could exceed 1.5C".
