Indicators of Global Climate Change 2022: annual update of large-scale indicators of the state of the climate system and human influence
8 June 2023
Earth System Science Data, part of the Copernicus Publications family of journals, is announcing an update to IPCC's most recent (6th) assessment, "Indicators of Global Climate Change 2022: annual update of large-scale indicators of the state of the climate system and human influence" (Forster et al., https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-15-2295-2023). An international group of researchers has built a fresh synthesis from diverse sources to convey, in a free, public, and transparent manner, key indicators of the state of our climate system. Assessing emissions, concentrations, temperatures, energy transfers, radiation balances, and human activities (including careful calculation of uncertainties in all cases), they conclude the following:
- Greenhouse gas concentrations in our global atmosphere continue to increase.
- Emissions of those greenhouse gases, principally from fossil fuel consumption and industrial activities, also continue to rise, albeit perhaps with an indication that rates of increase might have slowed.
- Temperatures, globally and over land, continue to rise.
- Earth's energy imbalance (energy gained – mostly into oceans – vs. energy lost to space) continues to grow.
- Global land temperature maxima, producing terrestrial "heat waves", occur with greater intensity.
- Human impacts dominate all changes.
- Remaining carbon budgets, calibrated to restrict global temperature rises to 1.5°C, become "very small".
The press release by the University of Leeds can be found at: https://www.leeds.ac.uk/main-index/news/article/5316/greenhouse-gas-emissions-at-an-all-time-high-warn-scientists
The interactive dashboard presenting the results can be found at: https://climatechangetracker.org/igccContact: Piers M. Forster (p.m.forster@leeds.ac.uk)
