Eight years of historic heat: UN warns that record emissions take us away from safe limit

Its latest report warns that this year drought, extreme heat or floods have affected millions and cost billions of euros.

“The greater the warming, the worse the impacts. We have such high levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere now that the lower 1.5 degree level of the Paris Agreement is barely within reach,” said Petteri Taalas, Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

These are statements that come after knowing the latest report published today by the United Nations agency, where it once again places the world in a red code. There are several telltale signs, but perhaps the biggest of them is that of the average temperature that the planet is reaching.

According to the State of the Global Climate in 2022 document, the past eight years are on track to be the eight warmest on record. Data referring to the warming of the atmosphere as a result of record emissions of greenhouse gases, in constant increase.

Concentrations of the main greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide) returned to record levels in 2021. The annual increase in methane concentration was the highest on record. Data from key monitoring stations show that atmospheric levels of all three gases continue to rise in 2022.

Consequently, WMO data reflect that this temperature will reach 1.15 degrees more than the pre-industrial period by the end of this year. This does not mean that, in practice, we notice that increase of degree and a half in the thermometers, but that this rise at a global level can be translated into less rainfall, unusual temperatures or, ultimately, in more extreme and unusual events for the date.

To get an idea of where we are, the WMO explains that between 2011 and 2020, the global average temperature remained at 1.09 degrees, according to the latest global review of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The last two years are setting worrying records. Ocean heat was at record levels in 2021 (the last year assessed), with a particularly high rate of warming over the past 20 years.

The ocean stores about 90% of the accumulated heat from human greenhouse gas emissions. Knowing this, WMO data reflect that 55% of the ocean surface experienced at least one marine heatwave in 2022. These are worrying data, because they can affect the normal functioning of the seas and their biodiversity.

The seas, in addition, are growing more and more. They are witnessing the increasingly dramatic impact of climate change. The rate of sea level rise has doubled since 1993. It has risen almost 10 millimeters since January 2020 and has even reached a record this year.

In the last two and a half years alone, they account for 10% of the overall sea level rise since satellite measurements began nearly 30 years ago. An increase that is the result of accelerated melting on the planet.

This 2022 has been difficult to ignore what happened with the glaciers. The thaw and the detachment of one of them in the Argentine Patagonia came to end the life of a tourist. However, the report notes that the European Alps are showing signs of unprecedented melting this year. The Greenland ice sheet also lost mass for the twenty-sixth consecutive year and rained (instead of snowed) for the first time in September.

“It is already too late for many glaciers and melting will continue for hundreds, if not thousands of years, with important implications for safety,” Taalas said. He comments that “the rate of sea level rise has doubled in the last 30 years. Although we still measure this in terms of millimeters per year, it adds up to half a meter per century and that is a great long-term threat to many millions of coastal inhabitants and low-lying states.”

A few days ago, UNESCO itself revealed the map of the 460 World Heritage glaciers with which climate change was going to end. He warned that, in three decades, those ice masses would disappear from places like the Pyrenees-Monte Perdido to the parks of Yellowstone and Yosemite. All with important consequences for the world population.

As the WMO representative recalls, “too often, those least responsible for climate change suffer the most, as we have seen with the terrible floods in Pakistan and the deadly and prolonged drought in the Horn of Africa.”

However, he also insists that even well-prepared societies this year have been devastated by extremes, as evidenced by prolonged heatwaves and drought across much of Europe and southern China.

“Increasingly extreme weather makes it more important than ever to ensure that everyone on Earth has access to life-saving early warnings.”

Source: 06