Not all areas of the planet are warming at the same rate. In a report on the state of the European climate published this Monday, June 19, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the Copernicus service (C3S) reveal that “Europe has warmed twice as much as the global average since the 1980s. “. In 2022, “the average European temperature was around 2.3°C higher than the pre-industrial average”, specifies the report, published on the occasion of the 6th European Conference on Adaptation to Climate Change (ECCA), which takes place from June 19 to 21 in Dublin. So above the objective of the Paris climate agreement ratified in 2015 by 196 countries, which aims to keep global warming “well below” 2°C.
This acceleration of global warming has direct consequences on ecosystems, the economy, as well as on the health of the European population. According to Carlo Buontempo, director of C3S, “the record heat stress that Europeans experienced in 2022 was one of the main drivers of excess weather-related mortality in Europe”. According to information from the database on emergency situations (EM-DAT) collected by scientists, meteorological, hydrological and climatic hazards in Europe in 2022 caused 16,365 deaths (including 2,800 in France , 4,500 in Germany and 4,600 in Spain), and affected more widely 156,000 people, mainly due to heat waves in spring and last summer.
Several hypotheses have been formulated in recent years to explain this accelerated global warming on the old continent. If a French study published in the journal Nature in July 2022 highlights responsibility for the “double jet stream”a very warm two-branch current of air surrounding Europe from the south and north, other studies like that of the University of Stockholm rather point to the very high concentration of greenhouse gases above the territory.
Heat records broken all over Europe in the summer of 2022
For several countries such as Germany, Belgium, Spain, France, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Portugal, the United Kingdom and Switzerland, the year 2022 as a whole was the hottest ever recorded. Temperatures reached 40°C for the first time in June in Italy, as well as in the UK and Hamburg in mid-July. “Several areas, particularly in the north of England and west of France, broke their previous record by more than 3°C”, points out the study. Even northern Europe experienced major heat waves in mid-August, “with records set in Finland, Estonia, Latvia and western Russian Federation.
Meanwhile, “precipitation was below average across much of the region in 2022,” causing early and widespread droughts in many states. France in particular experienced in 2022 the driest period from January to September since 1976. As did the United Kingdom and Belgium for the period from January to August. In Portugal, 96% of the country was already in extreme or severe drought at the end of February. “This is the fourth consecutive dry year in the Iberian Peninsula and the third consecutive dry year in the mountainous regions of the Alps and the Pyrenees”, details the study.
The lack of rainfall and the difficulty of the little fallen water to penetrate the dry land has caused severe water shortages, with the drying up of rivers and water tables. “This has had considerable repercussions on agriculture and energy production”, underlines the WMO report. In Italy, for example, “low water levels in the Po River affected agricultural production and allowed seawater to seep almost 40 kilometers inland, affecting river ecosystems” , says the report. The insufficient availability of water has also “resulted in a reduction in the production of hydroelectric and thermoelectric energy” in the country. The Rhine, which crosses Italy, France, Belgium, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Liechtenstein, Switzerland and Luxembourg, was also particularly affected.
More than 40 extreme climatic events
Global warming has thus generated 40 extreme climatic events on European territory in 2022, according to meteorological institutes. Two-thirds of those were storm-triggered floods, responsible for the vast majority of economic damage, while 13% were heat waves, responsible for almost all of the deaths caused by global warming in 2022, according to WMO.
Droughts and high temperatures have also fueled violent fires across the continent. According to estimates by the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), a total of 800,000 hectares have burned in Europe, making 2022 the year with the second most area burned, after 2017. The most affected countries have among others France, Spain, Portugal, Slovenia and the Czech Republic.
The oceans are also warming
European soil is not the only one warming up. Climatic phenomena linked to rivers and oceans were also accentuated in 2022: “record sea surface temperatures were observed in Europe, as well as marine heat waves. The melting of glaciers was unprecedented “, reports the WMO. Mean sea surface temperatures in the North Atlantic were notably the warmest on record, and large sea areas in the region were affected by “strong to extreme” marine heat waves, according to the report. . They lead to the migration of species and mass extinctions, the arrival of invasive species and the disruption of ecosystems and biodiversity. Rates of ocean surface warming, particularly in the eastern Mediterranean, Baltic and Black Seas, as well as in the southern Arctic, have been more than three times the global average.
The warming of air and water has also caused an accelerated melting of glaciers in Europe. The Alps were the hardest hit, with an average reduction in ice thickness of 34 metres. In 2022, glaciers in the European Alps experienced record mass loss in a single year, caused by very low amounts of snowfall in winter, a very hot summer and deposits of Saharan dust,” the study explains. Greenland Ice Sheet also lost 5,362 gigatonnes of ice between 1972 and 2021, contributing about 14.9 mm to global mean sea level rise.
All these climatic phenomena should persist in the future, or even continue to accelerate. “Unfortunately, this is not a unique case or a climate oddity, recalls C3S director Carlo Buontempo. Our current knowledge of the climate system and its evolution tells us that this type of event is part of a trend that extreme heat stress episodes will be more frequent and intense across the region.” Under long-term climate worsening scenarios, southern Europe could experience some of the largest global increases (by percentage) in extreme temperatures above 40°C and the number of consecutive dry days, the study points out.