2022 is warmest year in EU-Scientists
2023.01.10 07:55
2022 is warmest year in EU-Scientists
By Kristina Sobol
Budrigannews.com – Climate change unleashed record-breaking weather extremes in 2022 that reduced crop yields, dried up rivers, and resulted in the deaths of thousands of people, according to European Union scientists.
According to the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) of the EU, 2022 was also the fifth warmest year on record, albeit by a small margin. Other, longer datasets confirm that 2022 was the fifth-warmest year on record since at least 1850, despite the fact that C3S records date back to 1950.
According to C3S, the past eight years were the hottest on record in the world.
According to C3S, human-caused climate change is making the planet 1.2 C warmer than it was before the industrial revolution. According to Copernicus, over the past three decades, temperatures in Europe have increased by more than twice the global average.
C3S deputy director Samantha Burgess stated, “We are already experiencing the devastating consequences of our warming world,” and she demanded immediate action to reduce CO2 emissions and adapt to the changing climate.
Italy, Spain, and Croatia all experienced record-breaking temperatures during the hottest summer ever recorded in Europe. More than 20,000 “excess” deaths were caused by severe heatwaves in countries like France, Germany, Spain, and Britain.
GRAPHIC: Europe experienced record-breaking temperatures. The heat, combined with a lack of rain, led to a widespread drought that was initially ranked as Europe’s worst in 500 years. Shipping along Germany’s Rhine was slowed by low water levels, and a lack of rain hampered hydropower generation and reduced maize and soybean crop yields.
From Spain to Slovenia, intense wildfires were fueled by the hot, dry spell, releasing more emissions across the EU and Britain than any other summer in the past 15 years.
The national weather service of Britain reported on Wednesday that 2022 was the hottest year on record.
Countries can only stop warming the planet if they reduce their emissions to “net zero,” which means that they remove no more greenhouse gases from the atmosphere than they put into it.
That target has been set for 2050 by the EU’s 27 members, as well as by Britain, Canada, Japan, China, and India, among others.
Global emissions continue to rise in spite of those long-term commitments. C3S reported that in 2022, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations averaged around 417 ppm, the highest level in more than 2 million years.
More UN condemns executions in Iran but can do nothing
As the poor and vulnerable populations of the world continued to be impacted the most by global warming, other parts of the world faced a year of climate destruction. At least 1,700 people were killed by floods in Pakistan, and livestock populations in Somalia were wiped out by drought.
