The year 2022 was recorded to be the fifth or sixth warmest year having an average global temperature of 1.15 degrees Celsius, more than the pre-industrial average, in spite of the rare third year of La Nina, a natural phenomenon that temporarily cools parts of the Pacific Ocean that affects weather conditions across the globe.
A day before Earth Day, The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) released a 55-page report on Friday stating that the past eight years were recorded to be the hottest globally.
The report analyzed months of weather data which suggested that killer floods, droughts, and heat waves across the globe have drained billions of dollars. In addition, global ocean heat and acidity levels have been the highest along with the lowering amounts of Antarctic sea ice and European Alps glaciers.
Petteri Taalas, WMO Secretary-General, said, “In 2022, continuous drought in East Africa, record-breaking rainfall in Pakistan, and record-breaking heat waves in China and Europe affected tens of millions, drove food insecurity, boosted mass migration, and cost billions of dollars in loss and damages.”
According to WMO’S weather report, China has experienced its longest and recorded most extensive heat wave with a summer that was not just the hottest on record but overtook the previous record by more than 0.5 degrees Celsius (0.9 degrees Fahrenheit).
The report stated that the drought in Africa managed to force out over 1.7 million people in Somalia and Ethiopia, while Pakistan’s destructive floods had one-third of the nation under water, displacing about 8 million people.
Regardless of the measures taken up to reduce emissions of heat-trapping gases due to rising pollution, “Unfortunately these negative trends in weather patterns and all of these parameters may continue until the 2060s”, Taalas said. “We have already lost this melting of this glaciers game and sea level rise game. So that’s bad news”, he said.
Findings of the WMO’s report
- Antarctica’s sea ice decreased to a record low last June and July. Oceans were recorded to be the warmest, with their surface experiencing about 58% of the marine heatwave.
- The key glaciers used for health checks by scientists melted by more than 1.3 meters (51 inches) in a single year and it was for the first time that snow completely melted on Switzerland’s glaciers during the summer season.
- The high rate of melting glaciers and records of ocean heat levels, which cause water levels to rise, contribute to an average rise of 4.62mm every year from 2013 to 2022. This calculates double the rise of sea levels in the first decade, 1993-2002, resulting in an increase of more than 10 cm since the early 1990s.
- The rise of global sea levels at double the pace in the first decade of measurements in 1993-2002 has made a new record in 2022.
- Oceans level can increase another half a meter to a meter (20 to 39 inches) by the end of the century as a result of more ice melts from ice sheets and glaciers and the expansion of warmer waters.
Way forward
Taalas stated that extreme weather conditions will continue till the 2060s despite the steps taken to reduce emissions, but he also said we might have the opportunity to make a difference in this soon.
“The good news would be that we would be able to phase out this negative trend and even reach the 1.5 degrees (Celsius) limit,” he said, and the pioneering climate-related plans from G7 countries, which includes Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States, can lead the world to Paris’ 2015 temperature target.
Meanwhile, climate scientists have expressed that a new record of average temperature in 2023 or 2024 will be caused by changing weather patterns and predicting the return of the warm El Niño conditions
