A new analysis has found that the arctic regions and Europe experienced the worst effects of global warming in 2022.
According to data from Copernicus, the EU’s climate monitoring program, 2022 ranked sixth among all years for worldwide warmth.
With temperatures rising faster than any other region over the past three decades, Europe witnessed its warmest summer on record. The past eight years have also been the eight warmest on record.
According to Copernicus scientists, global warming continued in 2017 in the same pattern that has already become the new norm. The third consecutive year of the La Nia weather event helped to cool the waters, although overall temperatures were still about 0.3C higher in 2022 than they were in the 1991–2020 reference period.
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Researchers who undertook the study said that this indicates that the last year was over 1.2C warmer than the 1850–1900 era, which is considered to be the beginning of global industrialization.
At the extremes of this intense heat were Europe and the arctic regions. In numerous western European nations, including the UK, temperature records were broken, and many regions experienced summer heatwaves and severe droughts.
The study found that while the west of the continent was extremely hot, colder weather in northern and eastern countries saw the year overall drop to the second warmest in Europe. Even the normally cooler month of October in Europe was some 2C above average last year.
“We’re already experiencing climate change now,” said Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service. “The heatwaves that we saw in Europe over the summer, but also the spring, and also the autumn … many people will remember the heatwave that we had over the New Year’s period as well. So we’re seeing heatwaves, not only in the summer but in the rest of the seasons.”
Over the past 30 years, temperatures in Europe- which has the highest rate of temperature increase of any continent in the world- have increased by more than twice the global average.
This story was adapted from BBC.
