Europe – "leader" in heating due to climate change among the rest of the world

Europe is warming the fastest, according to a report from the World Meteorological Organization and the European Union’s Climate Change Service.

How informs AFP, temperatures in Europe have risen by 1.5°C over the past three decades. Europe was even hotter last year, by about 2.3 degrees – the hottest year on record experienced by Italy, France, Germany, Portugal, the United Kingdom and Spain.

Due to rapid warming, climatic cataclysms are observed – unprecedented melting of glaciers, forest fires and drought, record sea surface temperatures. The world’s most vulnerable people and the world’s poorest countries have been hardest hit, with little to no contribution to temperature-raising fossil fuel emissions.

Severe heat has led to the death of more than 16 thousand people last year. Floods and storms caused most of the damage from extreme weather and climate conditions, amounting to US$2 billion. Rising temperatures have damaged economies and ecosystems. The Alps recorded a new record loss of glacier mass in 2022, driven by very low snow levels in winter and hot summers.

In the oceans, the picture was not the best: the average sea surface temperature in the North Atlantic was the highest on record. Warming rates in the eastern Mediterranean, Baltic and Black Seas, and in the southern Arctic were more than three times the global average.

Agriculture and water supplies across much of the continent have been affected by significantly below-normal rainfall. As a result, large forest fires raged in France, Portugal, Spain, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic. The water supply in Spain, for example, was reduced by almost half, in some areas of France there was no water to irrigate the fields, and in Germany grain and vineyards suffered.

Scientists have said that the area of ​​sea ice in Antarctica is shrinking very quickly. Because of this, global changes in weather and climate occur.

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