All indicators are red. Following the latest IPCC report and many other scientific studies, a World Meteorological Organization (WMO) report finds that the eight years from 2015 to 2022 were the hottest on record. This “chronicle of climate chaos” shows “so clearly that change is happening at catastrophic speed and is destroying life on all continents,” said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
“At the start of COP27, our planet is sending out a distress signal,” he says in a video broadcast in Sharm el-Sheikh, calling for responses with “ambitious and credible action” during the two-week climate conference in Egypt.
2021 and 2022 warmer than 2011 and 2012
With an estimated average temperature of 1.15°C warmer than the pre-industrial era, 2022 is projected to be “only” the fifth or sixth warmest year, due to the unusual influence of La Niña for the third consecutive year, the marine phenomenon that leads to a drop in temperature. “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.
The average temperature in the decade 2013-2022 is estimated to be 1.14°C above the pre-industrial era, compared to 1.09°C in 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, this ambitious target of +1.5°C has become the “Keep Alive” goal.
Too late for some glaciers
“The CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is so high that the target of 1.5°C (…) is hardly within the realm of possibility,” commented the head of the OMM Petteri Taalas on Sunday. “For many glaciers it is already too late and melting will continue for hundreds or even thousands of years, with serious consequences for water supplies,” he added.
In 2022, for example, the glaciers of the Alps recorded a record loss of ice mass with a thickness reduction of three to four meters, “much more than the previous record in 2003”. 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.