Geneva (EFE).- The extent of sea ice in Antarctica fell to record lows in 2022, a year in which climate change “continued to advance,” the World Meteorological Organization warned today in its new report on the state of the global climate (WMO).
This Antarctic sea ice declined to an extent of just 1.92 million square kilometers on February 25, 2022, the lowest level on record and nearly one million square kilometers below the 30-year average. years, according to the report presented on the eve of Earth Day.
At the other end of the planet, the Laptev, Beaufort and Ross seas in the Arctic, as well as the waters north of the island of Svalbard suffered “severe and extreme marine heat waves”, in some cases for the second year in a row, as stressed by the United Nations agency.
Arctic sea ice reached a maximum annual extent of 14.59 million square kilometers in March, 440,000 square kilometers below the 30-year average, and a minimum level of 4.87 million square kilometers in September, 710,000 square kilometers below average.
2022 was the fifth or sixth warmest year on record
2022 was the fifth or sixth warmest year on record, with temperatures 1.15 degrees above average pre-industrial (1850-1900) levels, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
In the past year, climate change continued to advance, so that “droughts, floods and heat waves affected communities on all continents, causing losses worth billions of dollars.”
The fifth or sixth position -the position varies since six historical climate records from different agencies are used in the comparisons- occurred even though 2022 was influenced by the La Niña climate phenomenon, normally associated with a cooling of the planet and which lasts for three years, an extremely rare duration.