The year 2022 was another year of catastrophic and deadly extreme weather events around the world, fueled in part by human-caused climate change, United Nations Meteorological Agency He said Friday.
Droughts, floods and heatwaves have affected people on every continent and cost billions of dollars, the United Nations World Meteorological Organization said in its new report. “State of the Global Climate 2022.” The World Meteorological Organization said Antarctic sea ice had fallen to an all-time low, ocean temperatures and acidity levels were at record levels, and the melting of some European glaciers was off the charts.
“While greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise and the climate continues to change, populations around the world continue to be seriously affected by extreme weather and climate events,” WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said in a statement. New release.
The current melting of glaciers and rising sea levels show that “we’re already missing out” on these two key signals of the planet’s health, Taalas said.
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Eight of the warmest years on record
In terms of global temperatures, the years 2015-2022 were the eighth warmest on record despite the cooling effect of La Niña over the past three years.
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Specifically, in 2022, the United Kingdom, France, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Belgium, Luxembourg, Italy, Germany, Switzerland and New Zealand all have their hottest years on record.
Other global temperature and weather records date back to 1850.
In addition, the melting of glaciers and the rise in sea levels – which will again reach record levels in 2022 – will continue for thousands of years, according to the report.
And while levels were higher before human civilization began, the amount of heat-trapping carbon dioxide and methane in Earth’s atmosphere is the highest recently recorded.
For melting glaciers and rising sea levels, ‘we’re already lost’
The effects of climate change were felt around the world last year. “In 2022, the ongoing drought in East Africa, record rainfall in Pakistan, and record heat waves in China and Europe have affected tens of millions, led to food insecurity, fueled mass migration, and cost billions of dollars in losses and damage,” said Taalas.
The report said the main glaciers scientists use to check the health of the world shrank by more than four feet in just one year and for the first time in history no snow survived the summer melt season on glaciers in Switzerland.
“Unfortunately, these negative trends in weather patterns and all of these parameters may continue into 2060,” Taalas said, despite efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, due to pollution already emitted. “We’ve already lost that game of glaciers melting and that game of sea level rise. So that’s bad news.”
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Ice layers are losing ice
More bad weather news was released Thursday: A separate report found that the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica are now losing more than three times as much ice as they were losing 30 years ago.
Study co-author Ruth Mottram, a climate scientist at the Danish Meteorological Institute, said the new figures were “truly catastrophic”.
“This is a devastating trajectory,” said Twyla Moon, vice president of the US National Snow and Ice Center, who was not part of the study. “These rates of ice loss are unprecedented during modern civilization.”
The study found that since 1992, the Earth has lost 8.3 trillion tons of ice from the two ice sheets. That’s enough to flood the entire United States with 33.6 inches of water.
Contributing: The Associated Press
