Europe warming twice as fast as global average led to 16,000 premature deaths in 2022

Mon, 19 Jun, 2023 - 12:00

Pádraig Hoare, Environment Correspondent

Europe is warming twice as fast as the global average in the past four decades, with heatwaves alone contributing to more than 16,000 premature deaths last year.

The State of the Climate in Europe 2022 report, which was released in Dublin on Monday as a major climate change conference got underway, said the continent was approximately 2.3C above the pre-industrial average in 2022, far ahead of the 1.5C global marker for temperature rise limits.

The 1.5C is the limit globally in temperature rise compared to 1850 and 1900 in order to stave off the very worst fallout from climate change, according to scientists.

The 2022 report, produced jointly by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) and the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), said:

Several countries, including Ireland, the UK, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Portugal, Spain, and Switzerland had their warmest year on record.
Glaciers in the Alps experienced a new record mass loss in one single year, caused by very low winter snow amounts, a very warm summer and Saharan dust.
Extreme weather events caused around €1.8bn in damage.
Wildfires resulted in the second-largest burnt area on record.

However, the WMO and C3S said that a “sign of hope for the future” in 2022 was that renewable energy outstripped fossil fuels for the first time when it came to generating electricity.

Wind and solar power generated 22.3% of EU electricity in 2022, overtaking fossil fuel at 20%, the report said.

The report was released to coincide with the 6th European Climate Change Adaptation Conference in Dublin.

Director of C3S, Dr Carlo Buontempo, said the record-breaking heat stress that Europeans experienced in 2022 was one of the main drivers of weather-related excess deaths in the continent.

“Unfortunately, this cannot be considered a one-off occurrence or an oddity of the climate. 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,” he said.

Weather, water, and climate-related hazards in Europe in 2022 resulted in 16,365 reported fatalities and directly affected 156,000 people, according to data from the Emergency Events Database.

About 67% of the events were flood and storm-related, accounting for most of the total economic damages of about €1.8bn, the report said. Heatwaves led to more than 16,000 excess deaths on their own, it added.

WMO Secretary-General, Prof Petteri Taalas, said many countries in western and south-western Europe had their warmest year on record.

“Summer was the hottest ever recorded. 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,” he added.

Glaciers in Europe lost a volume of about 880 km3 of ice from 1997 to 2022, with the Alps worst affected, reducing an average ice thickness of 34 metres.

Chunks of ice float in a lake in front of the Rhone Glacier as people put covers over some of the glacier near Goms, Switzerland, Thursday, June 15, 2023. Picture: AP Photo/Matthias Schrader

Average sea surface temperatures across the North Atlantic area were the warmest on record and large portions of the region’s seas were affected by strong or even severe and extreme marine heatwaves, the report said.

It warned that marine heatwaves lead to the migration of species and mass extinctions, the arrival of invasive species, and the disruption of ecosystems and biodiversity.

In relation to renewable energy, the report earmarked Ireland along with Portugal and the Aegean Sea as having the best potential for wind power.

The ominous signs in the report in relation to the climate crisis are also underpinned by an assessment by America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which said last week that the planet saw its third-warmest May in 174 years.

May 2023 marked the 47th consecutive May and the 531st consecutive month with temperatures above the 20th-century average, NOAA said.

For a second month in a row, global ocean surface temperatures set a record high, it added, as it confirmed that the El Niño ocean warming pattern has returned.

El Niño refers to warming of the ocean surface, or above-average sea surface temperatures, in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, and its arrival almost certainly will lead to further temperature rises, according to scientists.