The World Meteorological Organisation has released its annual report, highlighting the state of the global climate in 2022 and as you might expect, it does not make for happy reading.
Droughts, floods and heatwaves affected communities on every continent, including:
- Temperatures reaching 40 °C in the United Kingdom for the first time, with Coningsby in Lincolnshire reporting 40.3C on 19 July.
- Pakistan reporting its hottest March and April on record. Then just 3 months later the country was hit by exceptional flooding. July and August were each the wettest on record nationally, resulting in over 1,700 deaths and 2 million dwellings damaged or destroyed.
- Hurricane Ian slamming into southwest Florida on 28 September, bringing sustained winds of 150 mph and an extensive storm surge. Ian was the fourth strongest hurricane on record to make landfall in Florida, causing 152 deaths, the greatest loss of life in a Florida tropical cyclone since the 1930.
- Subtropical depression Issa, combined with a cut-off low-pressure system, causing extreme flooding in April in the KwaZulu-Natal province of eastern South Africa. Over 300 mm was reported in 24 hours in some areas, leading to the loss of over 400 people.
- Temperatures soaring to 44.0 C in Paysandú, Uruguay on 14 January equalled the national record. There were also extensive and prolonged wildfires in northern Argentina and Paraguay, with over 900 000 hectares burned in the Corrientes province.
- China suffering through the most extensive and long-lasting heatwave since national records began, extending from mid-June to the end of August and resulting in the hottest summer on record by a margin of more than 0.5 °C.
To give an overview of how our climate system is changing, the report highlights the key global climate indicators. Levels of three greenhouse gases - carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide - continued to increase in 2022, and these record levels of heat-trapping greenhouse gases are causing ‘planetary scale’ changes on the land, in the ocean and in the atmosphere caused.
For global temperature, the years 2015-2022 were the eight warmest on record despite the natural La Niña event - the slight cooling of the surface waters of the tropical Pacific Ocean – being present for the past three years. Three consecutive years of La Niña is something that has only occurred three times in the past 50 years.
Around 90% of the energy trapped in the climate system by greenhouse gases goes into the ocean. The oceans cover around 70% of the Earth’s surface, so they are an important part of the climate system. They absorb both carbon dioxide and heat, thus slowing the pace of global warming in the atmosphere. However, the report highlights several negative affects of this absorption:
- The oceans are warming and in 2022, the ocean heat content reached a new observed record.
- The sea level is rising and continued to rise in 2022, reaching a new record high.
- Carbon dioxide reacts with seawater resulting in a decrease of pH referred to as ocean acidification. Ocean acidification threatens sea life and biodiversity as well as the people who depend on the ocean for their livelihoods.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres acknowledged that action was being taken, but impressed the need for urgency.
“We have the tools, the knowledge, and the solutions. But we must pick up the pace. We need accelerated climate action with deeper, faster emissions cuts to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degree Celsius. We also need massively scaled-up investments in adaptation and resilience, particularly for the most vulnerable countries and communities who have done the least to cause the crisis,” said Mr Guterres.
This is the link to the full State of the Global Climate report.