UN confirms 2022 among eight hottest years on record

The past eight years were the hottest since records began, the United Nations confirmed on Jan. 12, despite the cooling influence of a drawn-out La Nina weather pattern.

Last year, as the world faced a cascade of unprecedented natural disasters made more likely and deadly by climate change, the average global temperature was about 1.15 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said.

The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA ) and NASA released similar 2022 global temperature figures on Jan. 12 and Bill Nelson, head of the U.S. space agency, described them as "alarming."

"Forest fires are intensifying, hurricanes are getting stronger, droughts are wreaking havoc, sea levels are rising," Nelson said.
"Extreme weather patterns threaten our well-being across this planet," he said. "And we need some bold action." The WMO, a UN agency, said the past eight years "were the warmest on record globally, fueled by ever-rising greenhouse gas concentrations and accumulated heat."

The hottest year on record was 2016, followed by 2019 and 2020, it found.

Last year marked the eighth consecutive year that annual global temperatures were at least one degree over the pre-industrial levels seen between 1850 and 1900.The Paris Agreement, agreed by nearly all the world's nations in 2015, called for capping global warming at 1.5C, which scientists say would limit climate impacts to manageable levels.

But the WMO warned on Jan. 12 that "the likelihood of - temporarily, breaching the 1.5C limit... is increasing with time."
Russell Vose, NOAA's chief of climate monitoring, said there is a 50-50 chance that there will be a year in the 2020s above 1.5C, although a sustained...

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