The average
temperature
in the world in 2022 was 1.2 degrees higher than in the pre-industrial period (1850-1900).
This was revealed by the Global Climate Highlights 2022 report by Copernicus, the Earth observation program of the European Union.
2022 is the 8th consecutive year of temperatures more than 1 degree above pre-industrial levels according to which the
summer of 2022 was the hottest on record in Europe
.
2022 was the second warmest year in history in Europe and the fifth in the world.
Summer last year in Europe broke the heat record, which was from summer 2021.
Autumn 2022 was the third warmest on record in Europe
, surpassed only by 2020 and 2006. European winter temperatures last year were about 1 degree above average, placing winter among the 10 warmest.
On our continent, 2022 is only surpassed by 2020 for heat, but it precedes 2019, 2015 and 2014. According to Copernicus, Europe's temperature has increased more than double the global average of the last 30 years, with the rate higher than any other continent in the world.
Several countries in western and southern Europe recorded the warmest temperatures since at least 1950. Worldwide, the warmest years so far were 2016, 2020, 2019 and 2017 respectively. The last 8 years were the hottest ever recorded.
.
The Paris
Agreement
on
climate
expects to keep the temperature below 2 degrees from the 1850-1900 average, and the Glasgow Cop26 lowered this threshold to 1.5 degrees.
The global average annual temperature was 0.3 degrees higher than the baseline period between 1991 and 2020. Prolonged and intense heat waves hit western and northern Europe.
Persistently low levels of rainfall, combined with high temperatures and other factors, have led to widespread drought conditions.
Last year between June and August the European Union and the United Kingdom experienced the highest total emissions from summer bushfires in 15 years.
France, Spain, Germany and Slovenia recorded the highest summer fire emissions in the last 20 years.
Elsewhere, prolonged heat waves hit Pakistan and northern India in the spring and central and eastern China in the summer.
Pakistan experienced extensive flooding in August due to extreme rainfall.
In February, Antarctic sea ice reached its lowest extent in 44 years of satellite records.
For six months the extent of ice in the Antarctic Sea has reached record values or nearly so.
For the third consecutive year in 2022, the La Nina phenomenon occurred, i.e. the cooling of the temperature of the surface waters of the central and eastern Pacific Ocean.
This has led to low temperatures and high rainfall in eastern Australia.
CO2 at 417 parts per million, never so high in 2 million years
The average concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in 2022 was 417 ppm (parts per million), 2.1 ppm more than the previous year.
The average concentration of methane has reached 1894 ppb (parts per billion), 12 ppb higher than in 2021. For both gases, these are the highest concentrations recorded by satellites, and the highest levels for over 2 million years for carbon dioxide, and for over 800,000 years for methane.
This was revealed by the Copernicus Global Climate Highlights 2022 report.
For
Samantha Burgess
, Deputy Director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, "2022 was another year of extreme weather events in Europe and globally. These events highlight that we are already experiencing the devastating consequences of our planet's warming. The latest Climate Highlights 2022 clearly demonstrates that to avoid worse consequences, society will need to urgently reduce carbon emissions and adapt rapidly to climate change."
"Greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide and methane, are major contributors to climate change," said Vincent-Henri Peuch, Director of the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service.
