No More Time to Waste': WMO Analysis Finds Europe Is Fastest-Warming Continent. "This annual report is just a snapshot of the state of Europe's climate. It provides a sobering picture," said one expert. "Extreme weather killed 16,000 people in Europe last year, mostly due to the effects of the summer heat." "Chilling." "Shocking." "Sobering." Those are some expertresponses to The State of the Climate in Europe 2022, the second annual report published Monday by the United Nations' World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S). The publication was presented at the 6th European Climate Change Adaptation Conference in Dublin, Ireland. Its key findings "paint a somber picture for Europe last year," according to C3S, which noted that the analysis shows the continent "is the fastest-warming of all the WMO regions, warming twice as much as the global average since the 1980s." The other WMO regionsare Africa; Asia; South America; North America, Central America, the Caribbean; and the Southwest Pacific. "These supercharged extremes are wreaking havoc on livelihoods and infrastructure, including (ironically) the growing renewable energy sector." In Europe last year, "the annual average temperature was between the second and fourth highest on record, depending on the data set used, and summer was the warmest," the report states. Countries including Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom had their hottest year ever recorded—and though 2022 was "characterized by warm conditions, some areas were affected by cold spells and heavy snowfall." "Precipitation was below average across much of the region," which "combined with high summer temperatures, contributed to the largest loss of glacial ice recorded in the European Alps," the document details. "The Greenland ice sheet continued to lose mass during 2022, and in September periods of exceptional warmth led to widespread surface melt." "Sea-surface temperatures across the North Atlantic area of the WMO Europe region were the warmest on record and large portions of the region's seas were affected by strong or even severe and extreme marine heatwaves," the publication continues. "Drought also affected much of the region, particularly during spring and summer. The combination of dry conditions and extreme heat fueled numerous wildfires and the second-largest burnt area in the region on record." C3S Director Carlo Buontempo highlightedin a statement that "the record-breaking heat stress that Europeans experienced in 2022 was one of the main drivers of weather-related excess deaths in Europe." Specifically, emergency events across Europe last year directly affected 156,000 people and led to at least 16,365 deaths. Heatwaves represented only 13% of events but were tied to 99.6% of deaths. Floods, droughts, landslides, and wildfires were also reported, but 57% of events were storms, which caused 98% of $2.13 billion in total economic damage. "Unfortunately, this cannot be considered a one-off occurrence or an oddity of the climate," Buontempo said. "Our current understanding of the climate system and its evolution informs us that these kinds of events are part of a pattern that will make heat stress extremes more frequent and more intense across the region." Other experts and campaigners who responded to the report shared similar concerns for the future in a world still heavily reliant on fossil fuels and other sources of planet-heating pollution. "This annual report is just a snapshot of the state of Europe's climate. It provides a sobering picture," said Hannah Cloke, a professor of hydrology at the U.K.'s University of Reading.              https://www.commondreams.org/news/europe-warming-wmo-copernicus-2022