The past eight years have been the hottest ever recorded, while concentrations of ggreenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide reached new records, recalled the World Meteorological Organization.
“Antarctic sea ice fell to its lowest level and the melting of some European glaciers literally broke records“, warned the WMO, a specialized agency of the United Nations, in its annual report on climate.
He sea level also reached maximums, with an average increase of 4.62 millimeters per year between 2013 and 2022, double that between 1993 and 2002.
Droughts, floods and heat waves affect large areas of the world and the costs associated with them are increasing.
They also registered record ocean temperatureswhere about 90% of the heat trapped on Earth by greenhouse gases ends up.
In the 2015 Paris Agreement, countries agreed to limit global warming to “well below” 2ºC, preferably 1.5ºC, compared to 1850-1900 levels.
According to the WMO report, the global average temperature in 2022 was 1.15ºC above the average of 1850-1900.
Likewise, in the last eight years, global average temperatures reached records, despite the cooling caused by the La Niña meteorological phenomenon three years in a row.
Greenhouse gas concentrations reached new global highs in 2021 and continued to rise in 2022.
– “Lost game” for glaciers –
The glaciers that the researchers use as a reference lost an average of more than 1.3 meters of thickness between October 2021 and October 2022, a much greater loss than the average of the last ten years.
Since 1970 the glaciers have lost about 30 meters of thickness.
In Europe, the Alps broke records for glacier melt due to a combination of low winter snow, a Saharan dust intrusion in March 2022, and heat waves between May and early September.
“For glaciers, the game is already lost,” Petteri Taalas, WMO secretary-general, told AFP.
“The C02 concentration is already very high and sea level rise is likely to continue for thousands of years,” he explained.
In the Swiss Alps, “last summer we lost 6.2% of the glacier mass, the highest amount on record.”
“This is serious,” he said, explaining that the disappearance of the glaciers would limit the supply of fresh water for humans and agriculture, and would also harm transport links if rivers become less navigable.
This is going to pose “a big risk for the future,” Taalas said.
You can’t stop the melting “unless we create a way to remove CO2 from the atmosphere,” he added.
– Sparkles of hope –
“This negative trend (…) could continue until the 2060s, regardless of our success in mitigating climate change,” he added at a press conference.
Despite the bad news, Taalas said there is cause for optimism.
He stated that the means to fight climate change are becoming more affordable, as green energy is cheaper than fossil fuels, and that the world is developing better mitigation methods.
He The planet is no longer heading towards a warming of between 3 and 5ºC, as predicted in 2014, but towards a warming of between 2.5 and 3ºChe claimed.
“In the best of cases, we could still reach a warming of 1.5ºC, which would be the best for the well-being of humanity, the biosphere and the world economy,” said the WMO Secretary General.
Taalas stated that 32 countries have reduced their emissions and their economies continue to grow. “There is no longer an automatic link between economic growth and increased emissions,” he said.
In contrast to world leaders 10 years ago, now “virtually everyone talks about climate change as a serious problem and countries have started to act,” he added.
