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2022 was one of the hottest years on record despite cooling La Niña conditions governing the tropical Pacific Ocean.
Worse still, concentrations of greenhouse gases that warm earth’s atmosphere reached new highs last year, while the polar regions continued to warm at a blistering pace, according to new data released by the world’s leading climate monitoring agencies.
Earlier this week, NASA, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the European environmental monitoring program Copernicus all released their respective assessments of climate changein 2022, revealing a steady increase in average temperatures around the world.
Globally, 2022 was the fifth hottest year on record, according to NASA (opens in a new tab) and Copernicus (opens in a new tab). (NOAA (opens in a new tab) places the year just ended in sixth place with a marginal difference.) But some parts of the world – including Western Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia, China and North Africa -West – recorded the hottest 12 months on record.
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The past decade has seen 9 of the 10 hottest years on record
All of the hottest years on record have occurred since 2010, with the past nine years being the hottest “since modern record-keeping began in 1880,” NASA said in the statement.
“When you look at nine of the last 10 years, these are the hottest years in modern history since 1880, and that’s quite alarming,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told a conference. joint NASA/NOAA press release Thursday (January 12). ), when the new data was released. “If we don’t take it seriously and take concrete steps to mitigate [the trend]there will be deadly effects across the world.”
In 2022, the planet was on average about 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.1 degrees Celsius) warmer than at the end of the 19th century, just 0.7 degrees F (0.4 degrees C) below the threshold set by the global climate science community as a tipping point towards avoiding in order to prevent severe and unpredictable environmental consequences. According to the European Copernicus program, 2022 was also 0.54 degrees F (0.3 degrees C) warmer than the already warm average for the period 1991 to 2020.
“It’s definitely warmer now than probably at least the past 2,000 years, probably much longer,” NOAA physicist Russel Vose said at the press conference. “And the rate of [temperature] the increase over the past 50 years has been faster than at any time in the past two millennia. »
Record despite La Niña cooling
2022 was ranked among the 10 hottest years on record, tied with 2015, despite the so-called La Niña effect ruling the tropical Pacific Ocean. During La Niña years, surface water temperatures in the eastern parts of the Central Pacific drop, which in turn leads to wetter and cooler weather patterns in large parts of the world.
On the contrary, 2015, which was as warm as 2022 according to recently released data, was an El Niño year, with warmer tropical Pacific surface water temperatures and generally drier and warmer weather patterns across the world.
“NASA scientists estimate that the cooling influence of La Niña may have lowered global temperatures slightly (about 0.11 degrees F or 0.06 degrees C) from what the average would have been under oceanic conditions. more typical,” NASA said in the statement.
Vulnerable poles are heating up at a breakneck pace
The globe does not warm uniformly. In fact, some of the most vulnerable regions have already exceeded the 2.7 degrees F (1.5 degrees C) threshold. Fragile polar regions are warming exceptionally quickly, with parts of Antarctica and Siberia recording temperatures 3.6 degrees F (2 degrees C) above 1991-2020 averages in 2022, according to Copernicus. The heat has exacerbated the annual loss of sea ice, with the Antarctic region recording its second-lowest sea ice extent on record last year. Only 1987 saw more extensive sea ice loss at the height of the Antarctic summer.
Previous research supported by NASA (opens in a new tab) revealed that the Arctic, the floating ice cap covering the Earth’s north pole and surrounding regions of northern Europe and Asia, could be warming at a breathtaking rate, four times faster than the global average . And this trend is not expected to weaken, pointing to a future of accelerating ice sheet melting and sea level rise.
Greenhouse gas concentrations at new highs
Scientists are quite certain that more record and near-record years lie ahead. As well as being in the top 10 warmest temperatures, 2022 has also seen an increase in concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere, the two main contributors to ever-increasing warming. There hasn’t been as much carbon dioxide in the air in the past 2 million years, Copernicus says, while available scientific evidence shows methane concentrations are at their highest levels in more than 200,000 years. 800,000 years old.
“Preliminary analysis of satellite data averaged over the entire atmospheric column shows that carbon dioxide concentrations have increased by approximately 2.1 ppm [parts per million]while methane increased by about 12 ppb [parts per billion]”, Copernicus said in a statement. “This resulted in an annual average for 2022 of approximately 417 ppm for carbon dioxide and 1,894 ppb for methane.
Concentrations of carbon dioxide, which is primarily released by burning fossil fuels, have increased 50% since pre-industrial times, Vose said.
According to NOAA, the heat content of the global ocean was at an all-time high in 2022, meaning that the overall amount of energy accumulated in the upper 6,500 feet (2,000 meters) of the connected global ocean n has never been so high. The increasing amount of heat is likely to exacerbate many of the negative effects of climate change, including sea level rise, further melting of the polar ice caps and degradation of marine ecosystems.
“Barring a major volcanic eruption, there’s a 100% chance that in the years to come we’ll be in the top 10 again,” Vose said. “With El Niño potentially brewing, increasing concentrations of heat-trapping greenhouse gases, we’re definitely going to be close to a record high next year.”
The volcanic eruptions Vose refers to sometimes temporarily reduce global temperatures by injecting large amounts of sun-reflecting ash into the stratosphere, the layer of Earth’s atmosphere above the troposphere in which most weather occurs. Some volcanic eruptions, such as the Hunga Tonga explosion last year, can contribute to warming by injecting water vapor, which also traps heat, into high atmospheric altitudes.
The Hungary Tonga The 2022 heat contribution, however, was so small it was impossible to measure it, Gavin Schmidt, a NASA climatologist and director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said at the press conference.
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