Europe should brace for more deadly heatwaves driven by
climate change, said a sweeping report on Monday, noting the world’s
fastest-warming continent was some 2.3 degrees Celsius hotter last year than in
pre-industrial times.
Crop-withering drought, record sea-surface temperatures and
unprecedented glacier melt are among the consequences laid out in a report by
the World Meteorological Organization and the European Union’s Copernicus
Climate Change Service.
The continent, which has been warming twice the global
average since the 1980s, saw its warmest summer on record last year, with
countries including France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain and the United
Kingdom experiencing their warmest year on record.
The world has warmed an average of nearly 1.2C since the
mid-1800s, unleashing a devastating cascade of extreme weather, including more
intense heatwaves, more severe droughts in some areas and storms made more
ferocious by rising seas.
Hardest hit are the most vulnerable people and the world’s
poorest countries, who have done little to contribute to the fossil fuel
emissions that drive up temperatures.
But impacts are becoming increasingly severe across the
world, with regions in the northern hemisphere and around the poles seeing
particularly rapid warming.
In Europe, the high temperatures “exacerbated the severe and
widespread drought conditions, fuelled violent wildfires that resulted in the
second largest burnt area on record, and led to thousands of heat-associated excess
deaths,” said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas.
Temperatures across the continent rose 1.5C in 30 years,
from 1991 to 2021, according to the report, the State of the Climate in Europe
2022.
Severe heat left more than 16,000 people dead last year, the
report said, while floods and storms accounted for most of the $2 billion in
damages from weather and climate extremes.
“Unfortunately, this cannot be considered a one-off
occurrence or an oddity of the climate,” said Copernicus Director Carlo Buontempo
in the report.
“Our current understanding of the climate system and its
evolution informs us that these kinds of events are part of a pattern that will
make heat stress extremes more frequent and more intense across the region.”
- Renewable hopes -
Increasing temperatures have taken a toll on economies and
ecosystems, the report said.
In the Alps, glaciers saw a new record mass loss for a
single year in 2022, caused by very low winter levels of snow, a hot summer as
well as deposits of wind-blown Saharan dust.
The story was similar in the oceans, with average sea
surface temperatures in the North Atlantic the hottest on record, with warming
rates in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, the Baltic and Black Seas and the
southern Arctic more than three times the global average.
Marine heat waves — which can displace or even kill species
— also lasted for up to five months in several regions including the western
Mediterranean Sea, English Channel and southern Arctic.
Rainfall was below normal across much of the continent,
hitting agricultural production and water reserves while creating the
conditions for wildfires.
The year saw the second largest burnt area in the region on
record, with large fires scorching across parts of France, Spain, Portugal,
Slovenia and the Czech Republic.
The Spanish water reserve decreased to less than half of
capacity by July as the Iberian Peninsula saw its fourth drier-than-average
year in a row in 2022.
Farmers could not irrigate their fields in parts of France,
while the dry conditions hit harvests for cereals and grapes in Germany.
The drought also affected energy production, leading to
reductions in hydroelectric power as well as output from some nuclear power
stations which rely on water supplies for cooling.
But, in one positive sign for the future, the report noted
that wind and solar power generated 22.3 percent of European Union electricity
in 2022, overtaking fossil gas (20 percent) for the first time.
The report said this was due to a combination of factors,
including a “significant increase” in installed solar power last year.
“Solar and wind tend to complement each other throughout the
year: solar radiation is higher in late spring and summer while wind intensity
is usually higher in winter,” the report said.
While there has been no significant trend in wind or rain
patterns in Europe over the last 30 years, the report said there was a marked
increase in sunlight, with 2022 seeing the highest amount of solar radiation
since records began in 1983.
