After months of analyzing the weather, the World Meteorological Organization concluded that 2022 was as disastrous a year as it seemed to the people who suffered it.
And it couldn’t be worse… unless there is further warming.
Deadly floods, droughts and heat waves hit various parts of the world, causing billions of dollars in damage. Global heat and ocean acidity levels rose to record levels, while Antarctic ice and alpine glaciers fell to record levels, according to the State of the World’s Climate 2022 report from the United Nations meteorological agency, released Friday. .
Global sea level and the amount of heat-trapping carbon dioxide and methane in the air have reached their highest in recorded history. The glaciers scientists use to check the health of the world shrank by more than 1.3 meters (51 inches) in just one year, and for the first time in history no snow survived summer melt on Swiss glaciers. according to the report.
Sea level is now rising about twice as much as it did in the 1990s, WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas told a news conference. Ocean levels may rise between half a meter and one meter (20 to 39 inches) by the end of the century as ice sheets and glaciers melt and warmer water spreads, he warned.
“Unfortunately, these negative trends of weather patterns and all of these parameters may continue into the 2060s” despite efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions due to pollution already emitted, Taalas said. “We have already lost this game of melting glaciers and this game of rising sea levels. It’s bad news.”
Last year was the fifth or sixth warmest on record, depending on the measurement technique used. But the past eight years have been the warmest on global record keeping. The heat held on despite the fact that La Niña, a temporary natural cooling of parts of the Pacific that alters the global climate, lasted an unusually third year in a row.
The UK, France, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Belgium, Luxembourg, Italy, Germany, Switzerland and New Zealand had their hottest years on record.
Global heat and other climate statistics date back to 1850.
