Last eight years have been the warmest on record across the world: Report

According to a report by the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), published on Tuesday the last eight years have been the warmest on record despite the La Niña weather pattern, a Spanish word that translates to “little girl” and is referred to as “a cold event”. Additionally, last year was the fifth-warmest year for the planet since records began in the 19th century while also Europe witnessed its warmest summer in 2022 and the second warmest year overall, said the report.

Scientists have attributed this average rise in temperatures throughout the year in 2022 to an unprecedented number of natural disasters which brought record heat waves across Europe, India and Pakistan, followed by Islamabad facing deadly floods, and a near-record low amount of Antarctic sea ice. “2022 was yet another year of climate extremes across Europe and globally,” said Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service.

ALSO READ |Europe faces climate change heat with warm winters as temperatures break records

Add WION as a Preferred Source

She added, “These events highlight that we are already experiencing the devastating consequences of our warming world.” The temperatures in Europe have increased by more than twice the global average over the past three decades marked by the highest rate of increase than any other continent in the world, the report noted.

The annual average temperature reached 1.2 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial level, marking the eighth consecutive time that the temperatures were at least one degree above the 1850-1900 reference period, said the report. In this context, the report also mentions the La Niña phenomenon, which has been witnessed consecutively for the past three years as it typically leads to cooler global average temperatures.

ALSO WATCH |WION Climate Tracker: Counting the cost of climate change in 2022

This comes after most countries had agreed to cap global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius under the Paris Agreement of 2015, at the time scientists had said it would limit climate impacts to manageable levels. The limit was also identified as a key threshold, the breach of which could lead to a significant rise in extreme weather events and make irreversible changes to the planet.

According to Copernicus, the hottest years on record starting from the warmest one seven years ago, have been 2016, 2020, 2019, 2017, and 2022. The negative effects of global warming were seen across the world last year, as China and western Europe reported the adverse effects of weather conditions on their agriculture, energy management, and river transport.

ALSO READ |Merciless weather owed to climate change thrashed the world in 2022

For the first time in over six decades, the temperature recorded at Antarctica’s Vostok Station in March 2022 did not have a negative reading which is typically measured in Fahrenheit. Meanwhile, northern India and Pakistan witnessed a two-month heatwave in spring with temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius, said the report. European countries like France, Britain, Spain and Italy, recorded new average high-temperature records last year while the continent faced its second hottest year ever.

The EU climate monitoring service also highlighted the rise in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide and methane which are said to be the two main greenhouse gases which significantly contribute to global warming. According to the report, carbon dioxide levels increased to 417 parts per million, the highest in over two million years and methane rose to 1,894 parts per billion which was the highest level in the past 800,000 years.

ALSO READ |Human-induced climate change made summer drought ‘at least 20 times’ more likely, study finds

A report by the United States’ National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), released on Tuesday, noted how the country witnessed 18 disasters last year which cost more than $1 billion. To put this into perspective, the number was the highest since 1980 and the agency expects to see similar patterns in the upcoming year.

WATCH WION LIVE HERE

You can now write for wionews.com and be a part of the community. Share your stories and opinions with us here.