Last year was the world’s fifth hottest year on record, according to US scientists

Brussels: Last year was the world’s fifth hottest year on record and the past nine were the ninth hottest since pre-industrial times as climate change continues to warm temperatures and fuel extreme weather said a US scientist on Thursday.

Last year was the fifth hottest year since records began in 1880, joining 2015, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and NASA.

This is despite the presence of a La Niña climate pattern in the Pacific, which generally causes the Earth’s temperature to drop slightly.

Global average temperatures are now 1.1 to 1.2 degrees warmer than pre-industrial times.

Temperatures are rising by more than 0.2C per decade, according to NOAA-NASA analysis, putting the world ahead of the 2015 Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to 1.5C and avoiding the most catastrophic consequences. is on track to achieve

“At the pace we’re at, it won’t take us more than 20 years to get there. And the only way not to do that is to stop releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Gavin Schmidt, Director of NASA’s Goddard Space Institute, said:

Schmidt said he expects 2023 to be slightly warmer than 2022 due to a weaker La Niña effect.

“The global average temperature will be even higher 10 years from now,” said Sonia Seneviratne, a climate scientist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, as countries continue to burn carbon-emitting fossil fuels. As long as temperatures will continue to rise, he added.

Abnormal weather

A changing climate has spurred extreme weather across the globe in 2022. Europe suffered a record-breaking summer, floods killed 1,700 people and destroyed infrastructure in Pakistan, drought ravaged crops in Uganda, and wildfires ravaged Mediterranean countries.

Global CO2 emissions continue to rise despite the commitments of most of the world’s major emitters to eventually reduce net emissions to zero.

Last year, atmospheric CO2 levels reached levels not seen on Earth in three million years, Schmidt said.

At this year’s COP28 climate conference, countries will formally assess their progress towards the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C target and the much faster emission reductions needed to reach it.

The United Arab Emirates, the host country of COP28, on Thursday appointed the president of the state oil company to chair the meeting, sparking concerns among campaigners and scientists about the influence of the fossil fuel industry in the negotiations.

The NOAA-NASA findings are consistent with another analysis by European Union scientists. European Union scientists this week ranked 2022 as her fifth hottest year in the world.