The WMO’s ‘State of the Global Climate 2022’ 

(MainsGS3:Conservation, environmental pollution and degradation, environmental impact assessment.)

Context:

• The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has found in a new report titled ‘State of the Global Climate 2022’ that the world’s sea level is rising at an unprecedented rate, portending potentially disastrous consequences for the weather, agriculture, the extant groundwater crisis, and social disparities.

Rising vulnerability:

• This report shows that, once again, greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere continue to reach record levels – contributing to warming of the land and ocean, melting of ice sheets and glaciers, rising sea levels, and warming and acidifying of oceans. 
• There are major gaps in the weather and climate observing networks, especially in the least developed countries (LDCs) and small island developing States (SIDS), which is an obstacle for climate baseline monitoring, especially at regional and national scales, and for the provision of early warning and adequate climate services. 
• WMO works with its members and partners to improve climate observations through the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) and by ensuring adequate financial mechanisms for weather and climate observations through the Systematic Observations Financing Facility (SOFF).

Rising mean temperature:

• The global mean temperature in 2022 was 1.15 [1.02–1.28] °C above the 1850–1900 average. The years 2015 to 2022 were the eight warmest in the 173-year instrumental record. 
• The year 2022 was the fifth or sixth warmest year on record, despite ongoing La Niña conditions. 
• The year 2022 marked the third consecutive year of La Niña conditions, a duration which has only occurred three times in the past 50 years.
• Concentrations of the three main greenhouse gases – carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide – reached record highs in 2021, the latest year for which consolidated global values are available (1984–2021). 
• The annual increase in methane concentration from 2020 to 2021 was the highest on record. 
• Real-time data from specific locations show that levels of the three greenhouse gases continued to increase in 2022.
• Around 90% of the energy trapped in the climate system by  greenhouse gases goes into the ocean. 
• Ocean heat content, which measures this gain in energy, reached a new observed record high in 2022.

Ocean surface: 

• Despite continuing La  Niña conditions, 58% of the ocean surface experienced at least one marine heatwave during 2022. In contrast, only 25% of the ocean surface experienced a marine cold spell.
• Global mean sea level continued to rise in 2022 and the rate of global mean sea level rise has doubled between the first decade of the satellite record (1993–2002, 2.27 mm per year) and the last (2013–2022, 4.62 mm per year).
• In the hydrological year 2021/2022, a set of reference glaciers with long-term observations experienced an average mass balance of −1.18 metres water equivalent (m w.e.). 
• This loss is much larger than the average over the last decade. Six of the ten most negative mass balance years on record (1950– 2022) occurred since 2015. 
• The WMO report points to the following factors as being responsible for a rising GSML: “ocean warming, ice loss from glaciers and ice sheets, and changes in land water storage”.

Potential implications:

•  The accelerated pace will cause changes in land cover, i.e., “what will be land and what will be sea”, in the future and as rising seas swallow more of the land cover, particularly in coastal areas, coastal communities will face an “acute shortage of land for human use”.
• This land crunch will mean that those who are better off will be able to cope better than marginalised groups, leading to an increase in social disparities between people living in coastal areas.
• As the GSML continues to rise, along with a rise in ocean temperatures, the chances of cyclones could increase, affecting coastal communities and leading to large economic liabilities for tropical countries like India and South Africa, which have high population densities.
• As the GSML continues to rise, more seawater could seep into the ground, leading to the groundwater – which is usually freshwater – turning more and more saline. 
• This in turn can exacerbate water crises in coastal areas as well as agriculture in adjacent regions.
• In the Sunderbans delta in West Bengal, the world’s largest mangrove area, rising sea levels and coastal erosion, due to loss of land and sediment from coastal areas, has left more islands submerged under water, and that in turn has forced members of local communities to migrate.