2022 likely to be fifth or sixth warmest year on record: World Meteorological Organization

The estimate for 2022 is part of the provisional State of Global Climate Report that the WMO publishes every year. The final report for this year is due only in April next year, but like so many other reports and analyses that are timed around the climate change conference, the provisional State of Global Climate Report is meant to update climate negotiators on the latest trends and nudge them towards more urgent action.

In May this year, the WMO said there was a 50 per cent chance that the global temperatures would temporarily touch the 1.5 degree Celsius mark within the next five years (by 2026). It also said it was almost certain (93 per cent likelihood) that one of these five years (till 2026) would end up being warmer than 2016, thus setting a new record.

“The chance of temporarily exceeding 1.5 degree Celsius has risen steadily since 2015 when it was close to zero. For the years between 2017 and 2021, there was a 10 per cent chance of exceedance. That probability has increased to nearly 50 per cent for the 2022-2026 period,” the WMO said in a statement in May.

In its provisional state of climate report, released on Sunday, the WMO said the even more worrying aspect was the fact that the warming in 2022 so far has happened despite the presence of a prolonged La Nina (a cooling of sea-surface waters in the equatorial Pacific Ocean) which tends to temporarily cool down the earth a bit.

It also pointed out that the concentrations of three main greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and Nitrous oxide (NO2), were all at record highs in 2021. The emissions of methane, which is 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide in causing global warming, in fact, increased at the fastest pace ever. Incidentally, just last year, at the climate change conference in Glasgow, countries had pledged to cut global methane emissions by at least 30 per cent by the year 2030.

The WMO said real-time data from several locations suggested that the increasing trend for methane and other two gases has continued in 2022 as well.

As a result, the extent of the Arctic ice sheet had dropped to a record low in February this year, at nearly one million square km below the long-term mean, the WMO said. Sea levels had risen about 10mm in just the last two years, it said.

Climate negotiators from around the world are beginning their annual two-week deliberations on Sunday at the Egyptian resort town of Sharm el-Shaikh, hoping to facilitate more urgent and enhanced action to curb global warming.