The WMO State of the Global Climate report 2022 focuses on key climate indicators – greenhouse gases, temperatures, sea level rise, ocean heat and acidification, sea ice and glaciers. It also highlights the impacts of climate change and extreme weather.

Drought, floods and heatwaves affect large parts of the world and the costs are rising
Global mean temperatures for the past 8 years have been the highest on record
Sea level and ocean heat are at record levels – and this trend will continue for many centuries
Antarctic sea ice falls to lowest extent on record
Europe shatters records for glacier melt

From mountain peaks to ocean depths, climate change continued its advance in 2022. Droughts, floods and heatwaves affected communities on every continent and cost many billions of dollars. Antarctic sea ice fell to its lowest extent on record and the melting of some European glaciers was, literally, off the charts.

The State of the Global Climate 2022 shows the planetary scale changes on land, in the ocean and in the atmosphere caused by record levels of heat-trapping greenhouse gases. For global temperature, 2015-2022 were the eight warmest on record despite the cooling impact of a La Niña event for the past three years. Melting of glaciers and sea level rise - which again reached record levels in 2022 - will continue for up to thousands of years.

The publication provides a summary on the state of the climate indicators in 2022 including global temperatures trends and its distribution around the globe; most recent finding on Green House Gases concentration, Ocean indicators; Cryosphere with a particular emphasis on Arctic and Antarctic sea ice, greenland ice sheet and glaciers and snow cover; Stratospheric Ozone; analysis of major drivers of inter-annual climate variability during the year including the El Niño Souther Oscillation and other Ocean and Atmshperic indices; global precipitation distribution over land; extreme events including those related to tropical cyclones and wind storms; flooding, drought and extreme heat and cold events. The publication also provides most recent finding on climate related risks and impacts including on food security, humanitarian and population displacement aspects and impact on ecosystems.
Key Messages

Climate Indicators

Global mean temperature in 2022 was 1.15 [1.02 to 1.28] °C above the 1850-1900 average. The years 2015 to 2022 were the eight warmest in the instrumental record back to 1850. 2022 was the 5th or 6th warmest year. This was despite three consecutive years of a cooling La Niña – such a “triple-dip” La Niña has happened only three times in the past 50 years.

Concentrations of the three main greenhouse gases – carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide – reached record observed highs in 2021, the latest year for which consolidated global values are available (1984-2021). The annual increase in methane concentration from 2020 to 2021 was the highest on record. Real-time data from specific locations show levels of the three greenhouse gases continued to increase in 2022.
Socio-economic and environmental impacts

Drought gripped East Africa. Rainfall has been below-average in five consecutive wet seasons, the longest such sequence in 40 years. As of January 2023, it was estimated that over 20 million people faced acute food insecurity across the region, under the effects of the drought and other shocks.

Record breaking rain in July and August led to extensive flooding in Pakistan. There were over 1 700 deaths, and 33 million people were affected, while almost 8 million people were displaced. Total damage and economic losses were assessed at US$ 30 billion. July (181% above normal) and August (243% above normal) were each the wettest on record nationally.

Record breaking heatwaves affected Europe during the summer. In some areas, extreme heat was coupled with exceptionally dry conditions. Excess deaths associated with the heat in Europe exceeded 15 000 in total across Spain, Germany, the UK, France, and Portugal.

China had its most extensive and long-lasting heatwave since national records began, extending from mid-June to the end of August and resulting in the hottest summer on record by a margin of more than 0.5 °C. It was also the second-driest summer on record.

Food insecurity: As of 2021, 2.3 billion people faced food insecurity, of which 924 million people faced severe food insecurity. Projections estimated 767.9 million people facing undernourishment in 2021, 9.8% of the global population. Half of these are in Asia and one third in Africa.

Heatwaves in the 2022 pre-monsoon season in India and Pakistan caused a decline in crop yields. This, combined with the banning of wheat exports and restrictions on rice exports in India after the start of the conflict in Ukraine, threatened the availability, access, and stability of staple foods within international food markets and posed high risks to countries already affected by shortages of staple foods.

Displacement: In Somalia, almost 1.2 million people became internally displaced by the catastrophic impacts of drought on pastoral and farming livelihoods and hunger during the year, of whom more than 60 000 people crossed into Ethiopia and Kenya during the same period. Concurrently, Somalia was hosting almost 35 000 refugees and asylum seekers in drought-affected areas. A further 512 000 internal displacements associated with drought were recorded in Ethiopia.

The flooding in Pakistan affected some 33 million people, including about 800 000 Afghan refugees hosted in affected districts. By October, around 8 million people have been internally displaced by the floods with some 585 000 sheltering in relief sites.

Environment: Climate change has important consequences for ecosystems and the environment. For example, a recent assessment focusing on the unique high-elevation area around the Tibetan Plateau, the largest storehouse of snow and ice outside the Arctic and Antarctic, found that global warming is causing the temperate zone to expand.

Climate change is also affecting recurring events in nature, such as when trees blossom, or birds migrate. For example, flowering of cherry blossom in Japan has been documented since AD 801 and has shifted to earlier dates since the late nineteenth century due to the effects of climate change and urban development. In 2021, the full flowering date was 26 March, the earliest recorded in over 1200 years. In 2022, the flowering date was 1 April.

Not all species in an ecosystem respond to the same climate influences or at the same rates. For example, spring arrival times of 117 European migratory bird species over five decades show increasing levels of mismatch to other spring events, such as leaf out and insect flight, which are important for bird survival. Such mismatches are likely to have contributed to population decline in some migrant species, particularly those wintering in sub-Saharan Africa