Extreme weather in 2022 shows the impact of global climate change

It was another year.

Climate change has spread extreme weather around the world, shattering record temperatures, roaring down river levels to historic lows and raising rainfall to devastating levels. Droughts set the stage for fires and aggravated food shortages. Researchers have found themselves pushing the limits of human ability to tolerate extreme heat.SN: 7/27/22).

The extreme events from 2022 shown in the map below are just a sample of this year’s climate disasters. Both are exacerbated by human-induced climate change or projected impacts on regions.

In its Sixth Assessment Report, released in 2021 and 2022, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, warned that humans are dramatically overhauling the Earth’s climate (SN: 8/9/21). Earth’s average surface temperature has already risen by at least 1.1 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times, due to human inputs of heat-trapping gases to the atmosphere, particularly carbon dioxide and methane.SN: 3/10/22). That warming has changed the flow of energy around the planet, changing weather patterns, raising sea levels and turning past extremes into new normals (SN: 2/1/22).

But the world will face more extreme weather like this, which keeps the carbon accumulating in the atmosphere and the global temperature continues to rise. But scientists and others at the IPCC hope that by highlighting the regional and local effects of climate change, the world’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions would be more detrimental.