Naples, Italy — Europe is the fastest warming continent and its temperatures are rising at about twice the global average, two major climate monitoring organizations reported Monday, warning of the consequences for human health, melting glaciers and climate change. economical.
The U.N. World Meteorological Organization and the European Union’s climate agency, Copernicus, said in a joint report that the continent has an opportunity to develop specific strategies to accelerate the transition to renewable resources such as wind, solar and hydropower in response. to the effects of climate change.
The continent generated 43% of its electricity from renewable resources last year, up from 36% the year before, the agencies say in their European State of the Climate report last year. In Europe, more energy was generated from renewable energy than from fossil fuels for the second year in a row.
The latest five-year averages show that temperatures in Europe are now 2.3 degrees Celsius (4.1 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels, compared with 1.3 degrees Celsius higher globally, the report says, just shy of below the goals of the 2015 Paris climate agreement. limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
“Europe experienced another year of rising temperatures and intensifying climate extremes, including heat stress with record temperatures, forest fires, heat waves, loss of glacial ice and lack of snowfall,” said Elisabeth Hamdouch, deputy director of the Copernicus unit in the EU executive. commission.
The report serves as a continental complement to the WMO’s emblematic report on the state of the global climate, which has been published annually for three decades and which this year came with a “red alert” warning that the world is not doing enough to fight against the consequences of climate change. global warming.
Copernicus has reported that March marked the 10th consecutive month of record monthly temperatures. The average sea surface temperature across Europe reached its highest annual level in 2023, according to the Europe report.
The European report focuses this year on the impact of high temperatures on human health, noting that heat-related deaths have increased across the continent. He said more than 150 lives were directly lost last year in connection with storms, floods and wildfires.
The cost of weather and climate-related economic losses in 2023 was estimated at more than €13.4 billion (about $14.3 billion).
“Hundreds of thousands of people were affected in 2023 by extreme climate events, which caused large continental losses, estimated at at least tens of billions of euros,” said Copernicus director Carlo Buontempo. “Unfortunately, these numbers are unlikely to reduce, at least in the near future.”
The extreme weather fueled heat waves, wildfires, droughts and floods, according to the report. High temperatures have contributed to the loss of glacial ice on the continent, including the Alps, which have lost about 10% of their remaining glacial ice in the past two years.
Still, the report’s authors noted some exceptions, such as temperatures being below average in Scandinavia and Iceland, even if the mercury was higher than average across much of the continent.