This week climate scientist Professor Jim Salinger analysed that the year reached an average temperature of 13.77C, or 1.16C above the average for 1981-2020. The calculation draws from climate records taken from stations in Auckland, Wellington, Masterton, Nelson, Hokitika, Lincoln and Dunedin.
He said the weather was a mix of the established climate change trend, La Nina, and the Southern Annular Mode. Marine heatwaves are also causing above average sea temperatures. Eight of the past 10 years have been among the country’s warmest recorded so far.
Last year MetService issued 53 severe weather events last year and 182 severe weather warnings. Notably it was the wettest year for the past three decades. In July the Christchurch Airport station collected 309.8mm of rain, or five times its average for the month.
There were heavy storms from February into August with widespread flooding hitting areas such as Northland, Gisborne, Taranaki, Westland and Nelson.
Australia also suffered several rounds of floods and storms, deepening concerns about sea rises and increasingly uninhabitable and uninsurable areas in both countries.
This week, the Kimberley area of Western Australia has experienced record flooding. The January winter weather in Europe has been warm in several countries - with temperatures as high as 16 to 19C recorded in the central area. California has had three ‘’atmospheric river” storms since Boxing Day.
The surprising is now to be expected.
Despite overall worry about limited progress on climate change, 2022 was a watershed year in the sense that politicians globally were prepared to wield laws in more obvious ways.
The European Union set the pace on emphasising new requirements and penalties in a bid to bring emissions down, in preference to pleas to do better.
European countries were also spurred by the war in Ukraine into rapidly overhauling their energy policies, although that meant a grab for alternative fossil supplies to Russia’s in the short-term.
The EU agreed to a world-first plan to impose carbon border tariffs on imports of polluting goods such as steel and cement.
The plan aims to protect European manufacturers while pushing other regions into a new normal of taxing emissions. The Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism should “encourage our trading partners to de-carbonise their industry”, one MEP put it.
Effectively it is using the EU’s leverage to try to force other regions to up their games on tackling the greenhouse gas. This is a test case that could result in a common carbon trading system between major economies.
The EU was also key to getting a loss and damage fund across the line at the United Nations conference in Egypt and has agreed to help developing countries with financing for climate mitigation projects.
There’s also a general European effort to make public transport cheaper to use. Luxembourg’s public transport has been free for two years.
Belgium plans new taxes on older planes, private jets and short-haul flights. The European Commission approved a French bid to ban short domestic flights between places linked by train journeys of less than 2.5 hours.
Political leaders are galvanised by the fact that extreme weather events - hot and cold, dry and wet - are happening everywhere, every year at huge cost of state coffers, businesses, people’s pockets, and the environment.
Flooding in Pakistan in particular gave developing countries the impetus to push hard for the damages fund. A study into the floods found that global warming likely significantly boosted the amount of rain that fell.
In the United States, there are major long-term concerns about drought, water and food supplies in the west. Europe suffered its worst drought in 500 years with famous waterways shrinking in the heat. Britain experienced its hottest year on record, the Met Office said, even hitting 40C on one day. All four seasons were in the top 10 warmest since 1884.
Here, Niwa’s latest summer outlook from December into February predicts above average temperatures and likely a continuation of La Nina for that period.
