The world just failed its annual health checkup

By Laura Paddison, CNN

Droughts, floods and record low ice levels — from the top of the world’s mountains to the depths of the ocean, the climate crisis took a heavy toll as it continued to intensify in 2022, new analysis from the World Meteorological Organization shows.

The WMO’s annual State of the Climate Report, published Friday ahead of Earth Day, is essentially a health checkup for the world. It analyzes a series of global climate indicators — including levels of planet-heating pollution, sea level rise and ocean heat — to understand how the planet is responding to climate change and the impact it is having on people and nature.

The findings paint a stark picture. “2022 was a year of extremes for the planet — and this continues the trend set in previous years,” Omar Baddour, head of the Climate Monitoring and Policy Division at the WMO, told CNN.

A slew of climate records were broken, many of which have been, or are on course to be, broken again this year:

• Oceans reached record high temperatures, with nearly 60% experiencing at least one marine heatwave.
• Global sea levels climbed to the highest on record due to melting glaciers and warming oceans, which expand as they heat up.
• Antarctica’s sea ice dropped to 1.92 million square kilometers in February 2022, at the time the lowest level on record (the record was broken again this year).
• The European Alps saw a record year for glacier melt, with Switzerland particularly badly affected, losing 6% of its glacier volume between 2021 and 2022.
• Levels of planet warming pollution, including methane and carbon dioxide, reached record highs in 2021, the latest year for which there is global data.

These broad climate indicators are an important reflection of the state of the planet, the report noted, but extreme weather events — fueled by climate change — are where the immediate effects are most felt.

“While greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise and the climate continues to change, populations worldwide continue to be gravely impacted by extreme weather and climate events,” WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said in a statement.

Last year, climate change-fueled extreme weather “affected tens of millions, drove food insecurity, boosted mass migration, and cost billions of dollars in loss and damage,” he said.

In 2022, China had its most extensive and long-lasting drought on record. Droughts also affected East Africa, with more than 20 million people in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia facing acute food insecurity as of January this year.

Many western and southern US states experienced significant drought and Europe’s punishing heatwave is estimated to have led to 15,000 excess deaths.

In Pakistan, record-breaking rainfall left huge swaths of the country underwater, killing more than 1,700 people, with almost 8 million displaced, and causing $30 billion in damages.

The most vulnerable are the hardest hit, Baddour said. “Communities and countries which have contributed least to climate change suffer disproportionately.”

Last year is unlikely to be an outlier, as temperatures continue their upwards trajectory. The past eight years were the hottest on record, despite three consecutive years of the La Niña climate phenomenon, which has a global cooling effect.

The global average temperature last year climbed to about 1.15 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, according to the report, as the world continues its march towards breaching 1.5 degrees of warming for the first time.

With the predicted arrival later in the year of El Niño, which brings warmer global temperatures, scientists are deeply concerned that 2023 and 2024 will continue to smash climate records.

The hottest year on record, 2016, was the result of a strong El Niño and climate change, said Baddour. “It is only a matter of time before that record is broken.”

The WMO report follows an analysis published Thursday by the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, which focused on how climate change affected Europe last year.

It highlighted “alarming” changes to the continent’s climate, including the hottest summer ever recorded, unprecedented marine heatwaves in the Mediterranean sea and widespread wildfires.

“The droughts and level of heatwaves that we saw throughout 2022 were quite remarkable,” Samantha Burgess, deputy director of Copernicus, told CNN.

“This is really a wake up call that climate change isn’t a future problem, it is a current problem. And we need to adapt as quickly as possible,” she added.

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