India, Nov. 10 -- In the run-up to COP30 - it began in Belem, Brazil, on Monday - the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) projected a 70% chance that the average warming over the next five years will exceed 1.5 degrees above the pre-industrial level. The 1.5-degree target adopted in the Paris Agreement refers to the average warming over the long term (20 years). But the WMO's projected short-term spike is a portent of the accelerating climate crisis, and serves as a reminder of both the vast gap between action taken and action needed to contain warming within the 1.5-degree cap - which avoids cataclysmic effects - and the little time left to bridge this gap.

It is against this backdrop that nations must drastically expand ambitions u...