Europe’s second warmest year on record was 2022
Climate change has been the most adverse global concern since more than a decade now. However, in 2022, it was on an all-time worse with global warming and pollution on the rise. Recently, the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), an organisation dedicated for combating and overseeing climate crisis has announced that last year, Europe experienced the second warmest year on record (right after 2020), that was also the fifth warmest year for the world. Not only that, the 2022 summer was the hottest summer ever, while the autumn was third warmest ever – both on record.
The result was a severe weather change – soaring temperatures, heatwaves, drought, loss of crops, parched rivers and the worst of worst being thousands of deaths. This in turn made Europe the continent that warms faster than any other. In fact, for certain countries like the UK, Ireland, Spain, France and Portugal, 2022 was by far the hottest year ever, with the dataset going back all the way to 1950. But none of them had Italy’s fate. The birthplace of pizza experienced the highest recorded temperature ever in Europe at 52°C. Crazy, right?
What do we mean when we say that 2022 was the second hottest year on record and witnessed climate extremes? The annual temperature was 0.3°C above average in comparison to the temperature rise that happened in between 1991 and 2020. This can also mean that it was 1.2°C above pre-industrial levels. Sources cite that European temperatures have enhanced by more than twice the global average in this last three decades with the highest rate of increase in any continent worldwide. Moreover, the last eight years have been the consecutive eight warmest year ever recorded on any continent.
As climate change continues, western and northern Europe continue to see prolonged and intense heatwaves with persistent low rainfall. This, in turn, has led to drought conditions, not only in those regions but also the southern and central parts. We all know the consequence of this, don’t we? Innumerable and widescale wildfires. The emissions from these were the highest in 2022 as compared to last 15 years.
Apart from Europe, the polar regions also saw a whooping rise in temperatures in 2022 with East Antarctica recording a March temperature of minus 17.7°C, that was the warmest in last 65 years. Similarly, September temperatures in Greenland was 8°C, higher than the average. On the other hand, the Arctic saw low sea ice conditions throughout the year.
Climate experts suggest that the devastating impacts of the warming world is already biting us and it is only a matter of time that it wrecks us completely. In order to prevent that from happening, one of the most important measures that needs to be taken is to reduce carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions to net zero and in turn adapt to the changing climate.