From: https://www.theguardian.

com/environment/2023/apr/20/frightening-record-
busting-heat-and-drought-hit-europe-in-2022

‘Frightening’: record-busting heat and drought hit Europe in 2022

Continent set for further drought in 2023, scientists say, as unstoppable impacts of
climate crisis mount

Damian Carrington
Environment editor
Thu 20 Apr 2023 07.00 BST

The climate crisis had “frightening” impacts in Europe last year, with heatwaves
killing more than 20,000 people and drought withering crops, an EU report has
found.

Its writers said drought was already baked in for many farmers in 2023. The only way
to limit the rising damages of global heating was rapidly to cut carbon emissions,
they said.

The report, from the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), said widespread
heatwaves had led to Europe suffering its hottest summer on record in 2022, by a
large margin. These would have been virtually impossible without global heating and
had led to many premature deaths.

People in southern Europe endured 70-100 days of heat stress, where the
temperature felt like at least 32C, accounting for wind and other factors. In the UK,
temperatures passed 40C for the first time.

The heat, plus low rainfall, caused drought that affected more than a third of the
continent at its peak, the report said, making it the driest year on record. Flows in
almost two-thirds of Europe’s rivers were lower than average. High temperatures
also meant that the carbon emissions from summer wildfires were the highest in 15
years and the European Alps lost record amounts of ice from glaciers.

Overall, Europe experienced its second-warmest year ever recorded, with

temperatures rising at twice the global average rate – faster than on any other
continent. Over the past five years, the average temperature has been 2.2C higher
than in the pre-industrial era.

One bright spot in the report was that Europe received its highest amount of solar
radiation in 40 years, owing to lower cloud cover, enabling above-average levels of
solar-power generation.

“The findings are frightening, I have to say, but I think we have to know the truth,”
said Mauro Facchini, head of earth observation at the European Commission. “We
have more and more extreme events happening in Europe. Every one of us can
witness that.”

Carlo Buontempo, director of C3S, said: “We are really moving into an uncharted
territory.” The report should be seen as “yet another wake-up call to accelerate our
efforts” to cut carbon emissions, which also hit record levels in 2022, he said.
Scientists recently predicted that the imminent return of the El Niño climate
phenomenon would cause global temperatures to rise “off the chart”.

Dr Rebecca Emerton, the lead author of the C3S report, said: “We cannot stop these
climate impacts – we can only limit [them] by reducing greenhouse gas emissions
rapidly.”

She said a dry winter and spring in 2023 meant more drought was on the way.
“Unfortunately, the impacts are probably already in place for the growing season, so
we’re likely to see reduced crop production this year,” she said. Without global
heating, droughts such as the record northern hemisphere drought in 2022 would
have been expected only once every four centuries.

Prof Daniela Schmidt, at the University of Bristol, UK, said: “We are clearly not
prepared for droughts like we have seen in the last year, given the losses in
agriculture, scorched plants and fish in dwindling rivers. We need to invest to adapt.”

The C3S report also examined the Arctic and said Greenland had experienced record-
breaking ice-sheet melt during exceptional heatwaves in September, when average
temperatures were up to 8C higher than average.

A separate report, also published on Thursday, showed that the Greenland and
Antarctic ice sheets had lost ice every year since polar satellite records began in
1992, with the seven worst melting years all occurring in the past decade. The
melting drives up sea levels and coastal flooding across the planet.

The study, published in the journal Earth System Science Data, found that the polar
ice sheets lost 7.6tn tonnes of ice between 1992 and 2020, equivalent to a giant ice
cube 12 miles (20km) in height. Scientists predict that if the ice sheets continue to
melt at this pace, they will contribute between 15cm and 27cm to global sea level
rise by 2100.

Prof Andrew Shepherd, at Northumbria University, UK, said: “We are finally at the
stage where we can continuously update our assessments of ice sheet [loss] as there
are enough satellites in space monitoring them, which means that people can make
use of our findings immediately.”