Climate Change: Europe had hottest summer on record in 2022
- Published
For many countries in Europe, including the UK, Ireland, Italy and Spain, pictured here, 2022 was the hottest year according to data records that go back to 1950. Spain declared 2022 their hottest year on record and experienced some of their worst wildfires. Over the past 30 years, temperatures in European countries have increased by more than twice the global average.
The intense heatwaves and other factors also led to unusually high levels of wildfires, especially in France and Spain, with emissions from the fires reaching their highest level in 15 years for the EU and the UK. Across Europe and in the UK temperature records were broke with summer heatwaves and intense droughts. The data from Copernicus, the EU's climate monitoring service, says 2022 was the fifth warmest year globally.
Apart from Europe there were significant record heat events in the Middle East, Central Asia and China with heatwave conditions in Pakistan and parts of India. The Antarctic saw low sea ice during 2022 and temperatures in some places rose by more than 2C above the 1991-2020 average. At the Vostok research station, in East Antarctica, temperatures reached -17.7C, the warmest ever measured in its 65-year history.
Pakistan saw record-breaking spring temperatures, which were followed by record rainfall and severe floods, affecting around 33 million people. "2022 was yet another year of climate extremes across Europe and globally,” says Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service. She adds: "These events highlight that we are already experiencing the devastating consequences of our warming world."
China experienced long heatwaves and drought during the summer. The C3S report also showed that greenhouse gases are continuing to build in the atmosphere – which causes the Earth’s temperature to rise. It's why some countries are trying to get to reduce their emissions and get to net zero.
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