The year 2022 ended as the fifth warmest in the world and the second in Europe since there are records, which makes the recently ended year the eighth consecutive year in which the global average temperature exceeds the previous average value by one degree Celsius. to the industrial revolution (1850), according to the report ‘Outstanding Data on World Climate in 2022’ from the European Copernicus Climate Change Service, from the European Center for Medium-Term Weather Forecasts.
The work concludes that this was a “year of climatic extremes”, with record maximum temperatures, droughts and floods, minimum levels of ice in Antarctica, as well as a new increase in greenhouse gas emissions, while making special emphasis on the increase in these in Europe derived from the forest fires last summer, which were the highest in the EU + United Kingdom since 2007, while they decreased in the rest of the world.
Even France, Spain, Germany and Slovenia had the highest summer forest fire emissions in at least the last 20 years, contributing to local air quality degradation.
During the presentation of the report this Tuesday, the person in charge of Earth Observation in the Directorate General for Defense Industry and Space of the European Commission, Mauro Faccini, highlighted that all human activities are having an impact on the climate on Earth and has recalled the EU’s commitment to action once morest climate change. In this effort he has located this report because for the EU “without monitoring the planet and how it is changing, you cannot plan its resilience in the future once morest climate change.”
From the results of this data monitoring, he has indicated that 2022 was the fifth warmest year in the world and the second in Europe, which, for Faccini, shows that “the urgency of climate action has never been so important.”
“High-quality data, information and knowledge on Earth observation is essential,” he insisted.
For his part, the director of the Copernicus climate change service (CS3), Carlo Buontempo, explained that the new data reflects “another year” of climatic extremes and predicts that if he had to bet on a prediction of 2023, he would point out that this might be also a new warm year, although he has stated that it is still “early” to assess how the year as a whole will behave.
Thus, it has confirmed that the summer of 2022 was the hottest on record in Europe and each month of the boreal summer was at least the third hottest globally. Overall, 2022 was the second warmest year ever recorded in Europe, while globally it was the fifth warmest year according to the Era5 data set, behind 2016, 2020 and 2019 and 2017.
Specifically, 2022 was the fifth warmest worldwide, with an average temperature of 0.3ºC more than the average of the reference period 1991-2010, that is, 1.2 centigrade more than the period 1850-1900. In the Paris Climate Agreement, countries pledged not to exceed 1.5ºC in the global temperature increase between now and 2100.
In addition, the exercise had values very close to those registered from the fourth to the eighth year among the warmest. Precisely, the last eight exercises were the eight warmest globally since there are records.
On the other hand, the C3S/Cams scientist Freja Vamborg has specified that the work concludes that worldwide atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide increased by regarding 2.1 parts per million, that is, at a rate similar to that of recent years. , while methane concentrations in the atmosphere rose by regarding 12 parts per billion (ppb), above average but below the record highs of the past two years.
As for Europe, the Copernicus study indicates that 2022 was the second warmest year on the continent since there are records, only surpassed by 2020. The year was slightly warmer than 2019, 2015 and 2014. It also highlights that this was the hottest summer on record and the third-warmest fall.
The report, whose provisional data will be confirmed in the final Study of the year to be published in April, highlights the “prolonged and intense” heat waves that affected western and northern Europe, as well as a “persistent” low rainfall, which, combined with high temperatures and other factors, led to widespread drought.
Regarding other areas of the world, the document reflects the prolonged heat wave that affected Pakistan and northern India in spring, as well as central and eastern China in summer; as well as the general floods of Pakistan in the month of August caused by extreme rains or the low temperatures and high precipitations in eastern Australia during the year, events that he attributes to climatic characteristics “typically” associated with La Niña.
On the other hand, he adds that in the month of February the extent of Antarctic sea ice showed its lowest daily level in the 44 years of satellite records and that the extent of Antarctic sea ice reached record or near-record values for six months.
In short, temperature records in Europe, with its hottest summer on record and several prolonged heat waves, especially in the west and north of the continent, while other extreme events, droughts and floods, affected large regions of the planet.
In fact, Buontempo has insisted that the data reflect that the temperature in Europe has increased more than twice the world average in the last 30 years and presents the highest rate of increase of all the continents on the planet, a conclusion also commented by Vamborg .
In this context, the deputy director of the C3S, Samantha Burgess, has stressed that this yet another year of climatic extremes shows that the “devastating consequences” of global warming are already being experienced and that it will be necessary for society to reduce ” urgently reduce carbon emissions and quickly adapt to climate change” to avoid the “worst consequences.
By areas, temperatures were more than two degrees Celsius above the average for the 1991-2020 reference period in areas of northern central Siberia and along the Antarctic Peninsula. In addition, large areas of Western Europe – among them Spain, as confirmed by the State Meteorological Agency (Aemet) -, the Middle East, Central Asia and China, South Korea, New Zealand, northwest Africa and the Horn of Africa , had the warmest year respectively since there are records.
All of Europe, with the exception of Iceland, recorded above-average annual temperatures from 1991-2020. Temperatures exceeded average by the largest margin in the western part of the continent, with several western and southern European countries recording their highest annual temperatures since at least 1959.
Likewise, the warmest summer since there are records “by a clear margin” in Europe, was followed by the third warmest autumn, only surpassed by 2020 and 2006 and winter temperatures around one centigrade above average, which which is one of the ten warmest winters. By contrast, spring temperatures across Europe as a whole were just below the average for the reference period between 1991 and 2020.
Source: EP Agency