The Last 8 Years Have Been the Warmest on Record

As world leaders have come together in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, to discuss policy measures addressing the global challenge of climate change at COP27, an unseasonably warm October in large parts of the Northern hemisphere has served as a timely reminder of the problem at hand. Earlier this week, the Copernicus Climate Change Service, an EU-funded institute monitoring the climate on behalf of the European Commission, reported that Europe experienced its warmest October on record, with temperatures nearly 2 degrees above the average of the past 30 years.

Considering that 2022 was already on track to become the sixth warmest on record before October, it can now be safely assumed that the planet’s undesirable hot streak won’t come to an end this year. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the past eight years have been the warmest on record, i.e. since 1880, with global mean surface temperatures (land and sea) diverging 0.82 to 0.99 degrees Celsius from the 20th century average.

As the following chart shows, there is a clear warming trend with temperatures in each of the past 45 years surpassing the 20th century average. Conversely, the first 59 years of the observance period (i.e. 1880-1938) saw global surface temperatures below the 20th century average of 13.9 degrees Celsius. Лекции читаю, но, мне кажется, волна, длинее человеческой жизни, или сопоставимая с ней, 70 лет, к примеру, воспринимается плохо.