The United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization has warned that Europe has warmed at more than twice the global average over the past three decades and experienced a greater temperature rise than any other continent.
According to the joint report by World Meteorological Organization and the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service released on Wednesday, average temperatures in the European region have risen by 0.5 degrees Celsius (0.9 degrees Fahrenheit) each decade since 1991.
The report was published ahead of the annual United Nations climate conference COP 27, which will start in Egypt on November 6 and is expected to bring world leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen together to discuss how to address the warming of the earth.
Read also: In a statement, WMO Secretary-General, Petteri Taalas said that Europe presented a live picture of a warming world and reminded us that even well-prepared societies were not safe from the impacts of extreme weather events.
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The report showed that Europe has been experiencing record temperatures and has become a “heatwave hotspot” in the last few years and that Alpine glaciers lost 30 metres (just less than 100 feet) in ice thickness between 1997 and 2021, while the Greenland ice sheet is swiftly melting and contributing to accelerating sea level rise.
“This year, like 2021, large parts of Europe have been affected by extensive heatwaves and drought, fuelling wildfires,” Taalas was quoted as saying. He also decried the “death and devastation” from last year’s “exceptional floods”.
The report showed that extreme weather that is getting increasingly worse due to climate change created damages exceeding $50bn in Europe last year. It also warned that temperatures would likely continue to rise across Europe at a rate exceeding global mean temperature changes, regardless of future levels of global warming.
According to the report, the EU cut greenhouse gas emissions by 31 per cent, aiming to reach 55 per cent by 2030, between 1990 and 2020. The report also added that Europe is one of the most advanced regions when it comes to cross-border cooperation towards climate change adaptation.
In his reaction, Carlo Buontempo, head of Copernicus’s European Centre of Medium-range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) said that European society is vulnerable to climate variability and change.
“But Europe is also at the forefront of the international effort to mitigate climate change and to develop innovative solutions to adapt to the new climate Europeans will have to live with,” Buontempo.
Story was adapted from Aljazeera.
