The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) on Friday published its annual report on the state of the world climate, reports CNN. According to the channel’s website, the WMO experts concluded that 2022 was the year of climatic extremes for the planet, with a number of climate records updated. Meanwhile, experts warn that the climate situation will almost certainly continue to worsen.
Worsening climatic crisis in 2022 caused a heavy blow to the planet, which was felt everywhere – “from the mountain tops to the depths of the ocean,” writes website CNN. According to the channel, this conclusion was made by experts of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in its annual report on the state of the world climate.
As the correspondent of CNN notes, the report, the current version of which was published on Friday before the Earth Day, is essentially a “medical examination for the whole planet”: analyzing a number of global climate indicators, including the level of pollution caused by warming substances, the rate of sea level rise and the average temperature of water in the oceans, WMO experts determine how the Earth reacts to climate change, and what the latter results in for nature and humans.
This year’s conclusions of the experts were very tough, the CNN journalist says. “2022 was a year of extremes for the planet – and this only reinforces the trend that has developed in recent years,” Omar Baddour, head of the WMO Climate Monitoring and Policy Services, said in an interview with the channel.
According to CNN, the WMO found that a number of climate records were broken in 2022 – and this year, many of them have either already been or are about to be updated. So, the world’s ocean has warmed to its highest temperature ever, and almost 60% of its volume has suffered at least one period of abnormal heat; sea level due to melting glaciers rose to the highest point in the history of observations; the area of the Antarctic ice sheet shrank to 1.92 million sq. km, which at the time of publication of the report was the lowest value since the beginning of observations – and it has already managed to shrink even more; and the level of pollution by substances with a warming effect, including methane and carbon dioxide, also reached record levels back in 2021 – the nearest year for which there is global data, the CNN journalist lists.
The WMO report notes that while these indicators are important indicators of the overall state of the planet, much more tangible for people the consequences of climate change were abnormal weather events, which over the past year were recorded throughout the world, according to the CNN material.
China in 2022 had to survive the most extensive and prolonged drought in the history of observations, writes the website of the channel. In addition, the drought struck and in East Africa, as a result, by January of this year in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia with severe food insecurity faced by 20 million people. Periods of drought also occurred in many western and southern U.S. states, and the worst heat wave in Europe caused an estimated 15,000 excess deaths.
Record rainfall submerged much of Pakistan, with massive flooding killing more than 1,700 residents and displacing nearly 8 million. Damage to Pakistan’s economy caused by the cataclysm is estimated at $ 30 billion, notes CNN.
Meanwhile, all indications suggest that 2022 will not be an anomaly – because the average temperature of the planet continues to rise: the past eight years have become the hottest in the history of observations, even despite the effect of the climatic phenomenon La Niña, which usually lowers the global temperature, the journalist emphasizes. Last year the average temperature on Earth exceeded pre-industrial temperatures by about 1.15 degrees Celsius – and the world continues to move toward the 1.5-degree threshold, the author warns.
Since experts predict this year’s La Niña will be replaced by the El Niño phenomenon, which leads to warming, scientists fear that in 2023 and 2024 climate record updates will continue. As Omar Baddour pointed out in a conversation with CNN, the hottest year on record was 2016 – and it was the result of a particularly strong El Niño combined with climate change.
“It’s only a matter of time before this record is broken,” he was quoted as saying.