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We're about to push the planet into 'uncharted territory'

We've reached a milestone with climate change, and it's not one to celebrate.

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The Met Office, one of the world's leading climate-change research centers, announced November 9 that by the end of 2015, average global surface temperatures will likely hit a new record: a full 1 degree Celsius higher than they were during the pre-industrial period between 1850 and 1900.

global warming

The new data set, pulled together by the Met Office and the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, analyzed temperatures between January 2015 and September 2015.

A one-degree spike may not seem dramatic, but scientists believe that even just a few degrees of warming could lead to devastating consequences around the world. Scientists and policy advocates have said that the earth's "maximum temperature increase" before the situation becomes catastrophic is at 2 C. This latest news means that we're already halfway to a dire scenario.

And to make matters worse, some scientists think we've already put enough greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere to eventually pass that mark, no matter what we do. That's because it takes time for the cumulative effects to trickle down before we start seeing measurable impacts on Earth's temperature. In fact, the latest climate models predict that average temperatures could rise by between 2 C and 6 C by the year 2100.

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At the low end of the range, a spike of just 2 C from today's temperatures could melt a substantial part of Greenland's and Antarctica's ice sheets, threaten coral reefs and mountain ecosystems, and cause extreme weather events that could devastate cities globally.

On the high end, a rise of 6 C would create "a scenario which is so extreme it's almost unimaginable," Mark Lynas, environmental writer and author of the book "Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet," told CNN — including the end of agriculture, de-oxygenation of the ocean, mass extinctions, and more.

"[I]t's pretty much equivalent of a meteorite striking the planet," Lynas told CNN.

beautiful melting glaciers
Chasing Ice

A large part of the this years' global rise is due to cyclical weather patterns brewing at the same time.

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A warmer-than-usual Pacific Ocean has created an El Niño situation, which causes global changes to weather systems — including a wetter-than-normal Northern Hemisphere and drought in the Southern Hemisphere. It also raises global temperatures and dries out Indonesia, Malaysia, and northern Australia during their winter and spring seasons.

But while El Niño is partly to blame for the overall swell in temperatures, it's not the only culprit. Back in 1997, the last time the El Niño effect was this strong, global temperatures weren't nearly as high.

"We've had similar natural events in the past, yet this is the first time we're set to reach the 1 C marker," Stephen Belcher, Director of the Met Office Hadley Centre said in a press release. "[I]t's clear that it is human influence driving our modern climate into uncharted territory."

rain storm thunderstorm torrential rain hurricane
REUTERS/Adrees Latif

Average surface temperatures on Earth have been in a cooling phase for the past 20-30 years, during what's called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.

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This phenomenon funnels cooler-than-normal water to the eastern Pacific and warmer water to the west. But we may be nearing the end of this period which, combined with El Niño, could mean very hot years to come.

"Given the fact the Pacific Decadal Oscillation seems to be shifting to a warm phase, ocean heating in the Pacific will definitely drive a major surge in global surface warming," Veronica Nieves, a climate scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in a NASA press release in July.

One degree Celsius isn't just some number — a global rise in temperature has real impacts. We've already seen some of this nefarious climate-related fallout in 2015.

For example, a NOAA report in August found that July 2015 was the hottest month ever recorded since 1880 — the year we started keeping records of global temperatures.

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And a September 2015 study in Nature Climate Change found that the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada mountain range is thinner than it has ever been in 500 years. This snow is a major source of water for California, and its depletion has significantly contributed to the devastating drought.

Sierra Nevada snowpack comparison_an
Snowpack in the Sierra Nevada's has dramatically declined between 2010 and 2015. NASA/MODIS

We don't know for sure if we'll hit the 1 C mark this year, and it's hard to say if this warming trend will continue into 2016 and further. This is because natural weather cycles such as El Niño and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation vary from year to year, causing average surface temperatures to ebb and flow over time, Peter Stott, the Met Office's head of climate monitoring and attribution, said in a press release.

But if our models and thousands of scientists are right, consistently higher-than-average temperatures could become routine.

"As the world continues to warm in the coming decades, however, we will see more and more years passing the 1 degree marker," Stott said in a press release, "eventually it will become the norm."

Climate Change NASA
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