COP 27: Last eight years were the hottest in history, says UN

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Each of the last eight years has been warmer than all known records so far, according to a report by the WMO (World Meteorological Organization) released this Sunday (6), during the opening of the UN Climate Conference, COP 27. .

The WMO report is a “chronicle of climate chaos”, a phenomenon that “is occurring at catastrophic speed, devastating lives on all continents”, according to UN Secretary-General António Guterres, in a video message broadcast at COP 27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

“At the start of COP 27, our planet sends us an alarm signal,” Guterres said. To counter this alarming situation, “ambitious and credible actions” will be needed during the conference in Egypt, he added. The average temperature of the planet, compared to the pre-industrial era, has already risen by 1.15°C.

Officially, the international community promised to fight for this increase to remain at 1.5ºC, a goal that could be surpassed this decade.

The year 2022 will be the fifth or sixth warmest known, based on official records, and that “thanks” to the influence, for the third year in a row, of the oceanic phenomenon La Niña, which causes a decrease in temperatures in some regions of the planet.

La Niña “is not reversing the long-term trend; it is only a matter of time before a new, warmer year arrives,” insisted the WMO, a specialized UN agency.

The final assessment will come in 2023, but the WMO already warns that “the eight years from 2015 to 2022 are likely to be the warmest on record” to date.

multiplier effect

The average temperature during the decade 2013 to 2022 is estimated to be +1.14°C compared to the pre-industrial era.

Experts estimate that every tenth of a degree of increase in temperature has a multiplier effect on extreme weather events.

“CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere are so high that the target of 1.5°C is almost unattainable,” WMO chief Petteri Taalas commented on Sunday.

“It is already too late for many glaciers, and the melting will continue for hundreds, or even thousands of years, which will have major consequences for water supplies,” he added.

Glaciers in the Alps, for example, recorded a record loss of glacial mass in 2022, with a reduction in thickness of 3 to 4 meters, “much more than during the previous record of 2003”.

The news about rising sea levels is also not good, due to the melting of the polar ice caps.

Sea levels have risen by 10 millimeters since January 2022, which is equivalent to 10% of the increase recorded since satellite measurements began nearly 30 years ago. And the pace has doubled since 1993. The year 2022 was in the news for several catastrophic weather episodes.

“We know that some of these disasters, such as the floods and heat in Pakistan, the floods and cyclones in southern Africa, Hurricane Ian, heat waves and drought in Europe, would not have been as severe if not for the changes climate”, points out Friederike Otto, climatologist at Imperial College London.

“Across our planet, records are being broken as different parts of the climate system fall apart,” according to Mike Meredith, a scientist at the British Antarctic Survey.

Emissions of methane, for example, a major greenhouse gas, have increased dramatically in the past year as global economic activity resumed after the pause caused by Covid-19.

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