New Delhi, May 30 -- There is an 80% chance that a year between 2025 and 2029 will be warmer than 2024, a new World Meteorological Organisation report has warned - a forecast that shouldn't exactly be news because the past 11 years are the 11 warmest on record since records begin in 1880. Last year was the warmest on record, and before it, 2023. The report "WMO Global Annual to Decadal Climate Update (2025-2029)" has also projected that there is a 70% chance that the five-year average warming for 2025-2029 will surpass 1.5degC leading to frequent and severe heatwaves, droughts, and extreme weather events. This is up from the 47% probability flagged in last year's WMO report for 2024-2028 and 32% in the 2023 report for 2023-2027. The threshold is important because it is one of the goals of the Paris agreement. The WMO report emphasised the need for continued climate monitoring to inform decision-making and adapt to the growing impacts of climate change. It added that the annually averaged global mean near-surface temperature for each year between 2025 and 2029 is likely to be between 1.2 degrees C and 1.9degC higher than the 1850-1900 average. This means that annual global temperatures are likely to continue at or near record levels during next five years and stay well above annual mean temperatures seen in the last 60 years. WMO has however clarified that temporary breaches of the 1.5degC goal even if over a few years will not be considered a failure of the Paris Agreement. "The 1.5degC (and 2degC) level specified in the Paris Agreement refers to the long-term level of warming inferred from global temperatures, typically over 20 years," the report said referring to the fact that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) defines future global warming levels in terms of a 20-year mean. But, the central estimate of the 20-year average warming for 2015-2034 is dangerously close to breaching 1.5degC threshold at 1.44degC, (with a 90% confidence range of 1.22-1.54degC), as per the report. A WMO team of international experts is considering all of these estimates in order to ensure consistent, reliable and timely tracking of long-term global temperature changes, the report has said. How and when the world would declare that the Paris Agreement's lower limit has been breached was a grey area so far. "Every additional fraction of a degree of warming drives more harmful heatwaves, extreme rainfall events, intense droughts, melting of ice sheets, sea ice, and glaciers, heating of the ocean, and rising sea levels," the WMO report said. The WMO report notes that each of the last ten years (2015-2024) were individually the warmest ten years on record primarily due to the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide being at the highest level in 800,000 years....