Electrical transmission towers at a Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) electrical substation during a heatwave in Vacaville, California, US, on Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2022. California narrowly avoided blackouts for a second successive day at the same time as blistering temperatures pushed electricity demand to a record and stretched the state’s power grid near its limits.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Recent data from the U.S. government shows that 2022 was certainly one of the highest 10 hottest years on record, with data going back to 1880. And of particular note, it was the warmest on record when there was a La Niña trade winds pattern, which generally has a cooling effect on global temperatures.
On Thursday, NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released their global average temperature data. NOAA’s methodology found 2022 to be the sixth-warmest yr on record since 1880 and NASA’s methodology found it to be the fifth warmest, tied with 2015.
In accordance with each NOAA and NASA scientists, global temperatures were about 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit above their respective baseline averages within the twentieth century.
NASA and NOAA collect data from thermometers and other temperature-measuring instruments from weather stations, ocean ships and buoys everywhere in the world. Each data sets include information since 1880.
2022 had a La Niña weather pattern, which generally has the effect of lowering global temperatures in comparison with normal years.
El Niño and La Niña confer with opposite weather patterns determined by trade winds that blow within the Pacific Ocean. During El Niño weather events, the trade winds that sometimes blow west across the Pacific Ocean weaken, and warm water is pushed east and temperatures rise. During La Niña weather years, trade winds blow harder than usual and push the nice and cozy water west across the Pacific toward Asia which tends to be related to lower temperatures.
Whether you take a look at El Niño or La Niña years, it’s clear that global temperatures are rising and “those trends are consistent and coherent over a long time now,” Gavin Schmidt of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies told CNBC. “And people trends are on account of our activities — predominantly due to the increase in carbon dioxide and methane within the atmosphere.”
Global greenhouse gas emissions fell in 2020 due to reduced economic activity on account of the Covid-19 pandemic restrictions but have since risen again. Some regions of the globe have done higher than others at reducing their respective greenhouse gas emissions. U.S. greenhouse gas emissions were up barely in 2022 over 2021 but have been trending barely lower since 2000, in accordance with data the Rhodium Group released Tuesday, but across the board, emission reductions must be accelerated to mitigate warming temperatures.
This infographic from NOAA shows significant climate-related events from the yr. (Click on the arrow in the highest right corner to make the infographic larger.)
Courtesy NOAA
“What we’d like to do in an effort to stop global warming is get right down to net-zero carbon dioxide,” Schmidt told CNBC.
In the case of global temperatures, every tenth of a level makes a huge impact.
“Our normal context for temperature is our body’s temperature or the temperature within the room, and, we’re obviously not tracking that to 10ths of a level,” Schmidt told CNBC. “However the context for the planet is a really different thing.”
For instance, the last ice age 20,000 years ago was 5 to six degrees Celsius (9 to 11 degrees Fahrenheit) colder than the pre-industrial age and the world was completely different: There have been huge ice sheets on North America and Europe, the ocean level was some 400 feet lower than it’s now on account of the freezing conditions and woolly mammoths walked the tundra landscape. “Totally different planet,” Schmidt said.
“Once we say the planet has warmed greater than a level Celsius within the last hundred years, that’s one-fifth of the difference between then and the ice age,” he said.
The temperatures measure the worldwide average and other people live in areas of the world which can be more extreme than the changes to the worldwide mean. And already, with an increase in the worldwide mean temperature of a bit greater than a level Celsius since pre-industrial levels, there are significant changes to the planet including the frequency and intensity of heatwaves, the intensity of rainfall, the lack of Arctic sea ice and mountain glaciers, the lack of ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, and the rise in sea level.
“We’re seeing all of those changes just from a change of a level,” Schmidt said.
America had 18 distinct weather and climate events that cost $1 billion each, in accordance with a separate report out Tuesday from NOAA. Collectively, those billion-dollar disasters cost the country not less than $165 billion and caused not less than 474 fatalities, either direct or indirect.
“And, you recognize, if we carry on going, it is not going to be a change of 1 degree, it is going to be a change of two degrees, it is going to be a change of three degrees. And it doesn’t go linear. It isn’t going to be twice as bad — it is going to be much worse than twice as bad,” Schmidt said.
