2022 Was One of the Five Hottest Years on Record, Scientists Say

In 2022, rivers critical to trade dried up temporarily in Europe, the US and China. A third of Pakistan was inundated by monsoon rain. Ocean temperatures set a new record. Twenty-eight countries weathered their hottest years. An estimated 850 million people lived through their hottest-ever local average temperatures.
According to new temperature data released by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the US National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, the UK’s Met Office, the nonprofit Berkeley Earth and the Japanese Meteorological Agency, last year was one of the hottest years on record. This is in line with other data that shows a trend of increasing temperatures over the past few decades.
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As we enter a new era of weather extremes, we can expect to see more and more unprecedented events, according to Joeri Rogelj, professor of climate science and policy at Imperial College London. This doesn't bode well for climate damages and resulting suffering.
Every January, when updated annual temperature records are released, the world pauses to consider the inexorable onset of global heating. This has become a reliable moment for us to take stock of the situation and consider what needs to be done to mitigate the effects of climate change.

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"It's indeed a challenge to say anything new about climate change after decades of steady increasing warming," Rogelj said.
As long as greenhouse gas pollution continues, the Earth will continue to trap more and more heat. However, the gradual increase in heat doesn't necessarily explain the differences in year-to-year temperatures. It's variations in weather, steered most powerfully by an oscillation in the equatorial Pacific Ocean, that have the biggest short-term influence on weather.
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El Niño years are associated with increased global temperatures, while La Niña years tend to see cooler temperatures. In 2021 and 2022, we are expecting a La Niña pattern, which could lead to cooler global temperatures.
The Pacific Ocean's warm (El Niño) and cool (La Niña) phases can influence short-term temperatures. El Niño can cause an increase in temperatures, while La Niña can lead to cooler temperatures.

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There is a limit to how much La Niña conditions can suppress rising heat. The years 2018, 2021 and 2022 all saw La Niñas, but each of them was nonetheless hotter than every hot El Niño year that occurred before 2016, according to NASA GISS.
To get a better understanding of the warming trend, researchers can remove the El Niño/La Niña influence, which minimizes year-to-year weather differences. With this variability removed, 2022 is the second hottest year after 2020.
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According to Zeke Hausfather, research scientist at Berkeley Earth, if you draw a straight line through a chart of global average temperatures since 1970, "2022 is pretty much dead on the trend." Hausfather went on to say that even though global temperatures are a little cooler than some of the last few years, they are right around where we would expect them to be, given the underlying rate of warming of about 0.2C per decade.
Although the temperature record has become quite predictable, many scientists have been surprised by the pace of extreme weather events in recent years.
Every year, the "warming stripes" visualization of the temperature record is updated with a new line. This graphic represents each year as a color-coded vertical bar. Ed Hawkins, a professor of climate science at the University of Reading, came up with the idea for the graphic. He said that 2022 almost qualified for the darkest red category - remarkable for a La Niña year.
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"The data from 2022 is alarming, no matter how you look at it," he said. "Whether you view the figures in their raw form, or look at the data as another red line added to the climate stripes, the message is clear. Excess heat is building up across the planet at a rate unprecedented in the history of humanity."
"There's no end in sight," said Katharine Hayhoe, chief scientist at The Nature Conservancy. "People are realizing that the extreme weather and climate disasters we're seeing around the world are not going to stop anytime soon."
Hayhoe said that over the past year, she has seen a rapid increase in reporting on what is being done to address the climate crisis. She said this makes her happy.