Last Eight Years Were the Warmest in Modern Times, WMO Says

Rate of sea-level rise is accelerating due to melting ice and warmer waters

· The rate of sea-level rise has doubled since satellite measurements began in 1993.

· Melting glaciers and warming water, which expands in volume, have combined to push sea levels higher by 0.4 inch since 2020.

· Representatives of more than 190 nations are gathering in the Egyptian resort town of Sharm El Sheikh for two weeks of talks that have been reshaped by the war in Ukraine and Europe’s energy crisis.

· President Biden is scheduled to address the conference Friday, according to the White House.

· The push to require industrialized countries to compensate developing nations for what they say are climate-related losses was added Sunday to the official agenda of COP27.

· Concentrations of the three main greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide—reached record highs in 2021.

· Temperatures across Europe rose about 0.5 degree Celsius (0.9 degree Fahrenheit) per decade from 1991 to 2021.

· Greenhouse gases spread equally throughout the Earth’s atmosphere

· Since 2001, Switzerland’s glaciers have lost a third of their mass, with 6% melting in the past year.

· Rains in East Africa that have been below normal for four seasons in a row, the longest period in 40 years. In Pakistan, record floods in July and August killed 1,700 people and displaced nearly eight million.

· U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres is expected to announce details of a climate early warning system for developing nations that could be ready in the next five years.

The last eight years have each been warmer than all years before that period on record, according to a report by the World Meteorological Organization that was released Sunday as the United Nations opened two weeks of climate talks.

COP27 President Sameh Shoukry of Egypt said loss and damage “is recognized by the vast majority of the international community as a very fundamental issue that has to be addressed with transparency and dedication.”

The WMO’s State of the Global Climate report found that concentrations of the three main greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide—reached record highs in 2021. These compounds trap solar radiation and warm the Earth’s surface. Higher temperatures are linked to more and increasingly severe droughts, intense rainfall, floods and storms, according to climate scientists working for the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The WMO report doesn’t tie individual weather events to climate change. However, the authors say that many of these events are becoming more severe and more common as the Earth’s climate continues to rapidly warm, a scientific consensus that is echoed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2021 report on physical science of climate change.

“As long as these greenhouse gas concentrations continue to increase, the resulting patterns will also continue,” said Freja Vamborg, a contributing author of both WMO reports and a senior scientist at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts.

In 2021, the European region was pummeled by $50 billion in damage from record-setting floods, wildfires and storms that killed 297 people, the WMO European report said. Since 2001, Switzerland’s glaciers have lost a third of their mass, with 6% melting in the past year, the new WMO report said.