Climate scientist Robert Rohde says while Canada's average temperature was 'well above normal' last year, 2021 was almost a degree warmer than 2022, making it the fifth hottest on record.
Scientists say 2022 was the 17th hottest year on record in Canada, and the Earth’s fifth warmest, as the “code red” climate emergency—fuelled by human-caused greenhouse gas emissions—continues to escalate.
Canada last year was 1.2 C warmer than was typical about 60 years ago, said Robert Rohde, the lead scientist at Berkeley Earth, a California-based organization that conducts temperature data analysis.
Start your day with a roundup of B.C.-focused news and opinion delivered straight to your inbox at 7 a.m., Monday to Friday.
Thanks for signing up!
A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder.
The next issue of Sunrise presented by Vancouver Sun will soon be in your inbox.
So, the 17th warmest year was “well above average, but not near the peak,” he said, adding that 2021 in Canada was almost a degree warmer than 2022, and the fifth warmest year on record.
That was the year of B.C.’s deadly heat dome, which pushed temperatures into the 40s, including a record high temperature of 49.6 C in Lytton, one day before the village burned down from wildfire.
In a report earlier this week, Berkeley Earth says 2022 was the planet’s fifth hottest since 1850, driven largely by extreme heat waves in Europe last summer.
In a news release Friday, NASA also said Earth’s average surface temperature in 2022 tied with 2015 as the fifth warmest on record.
Continuing the planet’s long-term warming trend, global temperatures last year were 0.89 C above the average for NASA’s baseline period of 1951 to 1980, scientists from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies said, in a statement.
And, NASA said the past nine years have been the warmest years since modern record-keeping began in 1880. This means Earth in 2022 was about 1.11 C warmer than the late 19th century average.
Many European countries set heat records last year, including Spain, France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom, where 26,000 deaths were attributed to summer heat waves, according to the report. However, it notes this number may be an underestimate because 53,000 excess deaths were reported in July alone.
The summer heat waves included the first ever recorded 40 C in the U.K., which the report says would be “virtually impossible without global warming.”
And, a March heat wave in the Antarctic pushed temperatures to 38.5 C above normal at the Vostok station. The Berkeley report says this is largest temperature excursion above normal ever measured at any weather station anywhere on Earth.
The Paris Agreement aims to keep global heating below 2 C and strives for no more than 1.5 C. However, as the report notes, the world is on track to breach that goal by 2034. If the Paris Agreement’s goal of no more than 2 C is to be reached, then significant progress on cutting greenhouse gas emissions must be made soon, the report says.
Scientists at Berkeley Earth predict that 2023 will be similar to 2022, or slightly warmer. The report says there is a 99 per cent certainty that this year will remain in the Top 10 hottest years on record.
“This warming trend is alarming,” said NASA administrator Bill Nelson, in a statement.
“Our warming climate is already making a mark: Forest fires are intensifying; hurricanes are getting stronger; droughts are wreaking havoc and sea levels are rising. NASA is deepening our commitment to do our part in addressing climate change.”
Gavin Schmidt, director of GISS, NASA’s leading centre for climate modelling, said, in a statement Friday, that the reason for the warming trend is that human activities continue “to pump enormous amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.”
A separate, independent analysis by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found the global surface temperature for 2022 was the sixth highest since 1880. NOAA scientists have a different baseline period and methodology. Although rankings for specific years can differ slightly between the records, NASA says they are in broad agreement and both reflect ongoing long-term warming.
In 2021, UN Secretary-General called the latest climate change science “a code red for humanity.”
He said that the internationally-agreed threshold of 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels of global heating was perilously close.
“The alarm bells are deafening, and the evidence is irrefutable,” he said.
ticrawford@postmedia.com