Europe heating up more than twice global average

• Published date: 03 November 2022
• Publication title: Philippines News agency

Temperatures in Europe have risen more than twice the global average over the past three decades, according to the UN's World Meteorological Organization (WMO), which says Europe's is the highest increase in the world.

"As the warming trend continues, exceptional heat, wildfires, floods and other climate change impacts will affect society, economies and ecosystems," said a report jointly released on Wednesday by the WMO and the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service.

The report focused on rising temperatures in 2021 along with land and marine heatwaves, extreme weather, and retreating ice and snow.

"Temperatures over Europe have warmed significantly over the 1991-2021 period, at an average rate of about +0.5 °C per decade," the report said.

As a result of the rising temperature, Alpine glaciers lost 30 meters in ice thickness from 1997 to 2021, while the Greenland ice sheet is melting and contributing to accelerating sea level rise, the report found.

Although the EU's greenhouse gas emissions fell 31 percent between 1990 and 2020 - still behind the 55 percent reduction target for 2030 - high-impact weather and climate events continued to disrupt the lives of Europeans in 2021.

'Europe presents a live...