If forecasts for this year are confirmed, the eight years from 2015 to 2022 will be the hottest on record, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) warned on Sunday in a report that is more than a “chronicle of climate chaos.”
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“As COP27 begins, our planet is sending out a distress signal,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a video message broadcast in Sharm el-Sheikh.
This “chronicle of climate chaos” shows “so clearly that change is happening at catastrophic speed, destroying life on every continent,” he added, calling for the response to it with “ambitious and credible action” during the two-week climate conference in Egypt.
With an average temperature 1.15°C warmer than in the pre-industrial period, the year 2022 is expected to rank “only” fifth or sixth of these hottest years for the third year in a row due to the unusual influence of the marine phenomenon La Nina, which leads to a temperature drop leads.
“But that doesn’t reverse the long-term trend; it is only a matter of time before there is another warmer year,” emphasized the WMO, the specialized agency of the United Nations.
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melting of the glaciers
To prove this trend, “the eight years from 2015 to 2022 will likely be the eight hottest years on record,” estimated the organization, which will publish its final assessment in 2023.
The mean temperature for the decade 2013-2022 is estimated to be 1.14°C higher than in the pre-industrial era, compared to 1.09°C for the period 2011-2020.
The Paris climate agreement aims to limit warming to well below 2°C, if possible to 1.5°C. While science has proven that every tenth of a degree multiplies extreme weather events, the 1.5°C increase has become a “stay alive” goal.
“The CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is so high that the 1.5 degree target is reached […] hardly within the realm of possibility,” commented OMM boss Petteri Taalas on Sunday.
“For many glaciers it is already too late and melting will continue for hundreds or even thousands of years, with major consequences for water supplies,” he added.
In 2022, for example, the Alpine glaciers recorded a record loss of ice mass with a thickness reduction of 3 to 4 m; “much more than the previous record in 2003”.
“Blinders”
And the news is no better on the side of rising sea levels, which is largely related to melting ice caps.
Sea level is also on “record” in 2022, rising 10mm since January 2020, or 10% of the rise since satellite measurements began nearly 30 years ago. And the rate of increase has doubled since 1993.
The planet has also fallen victim to an avalanche of extreme events this year, from historic floods in Pakistan to repeated heat waves in Europe, including droughts in the Horn of Africa.
“We know that some of these disasters, floods and heat in Pakistan, floods and hurricanes in southern Africa, Hurricane Ian, extreme heat waves and drought in Europe, would not have been so bad without climate change,” commented climate scientist Friederike Otto Imperial College London.
“If ever there was a year to rip off and burn the blinkers that prevent climate action, this is it,” added Dave Reay of the University of Edinburgh.