OBSERVER: 2022: a year of extremes
OBSERVER: 2022: a year of extremes
frederic.collo…
Thu, 22/12/2022 – 12:12
The year 2022 saw record droughts, temperatures, wildfires, floods and an all-time low in Antarctic sea ice, many of them characterised by one word: extremes.
Precipitation, or the absence thereof, has played a key role in several extreme weather or climate-related events, with historical droughts threatening entire communities and impacting livelihoods by inducing food as well as water insecurity in different regions.
While intense drought episodes affected regions of Europe, East Africa, China and South America, other communities had to deal with the consequences of excess precipitation. Epic floods hit Australia and Pakistan but also countries such as Chad, Sudan and Nigeria.
The prolonged drought that has affected various parts of the globe together with the record temperatures were contributing forces that have certainly caused an increased wildfire risk, which peaked during the summer season both in Europe, in the Mediterranean region, and in the north-west of the United States.
This article reviews the year of extremes which we have been through, as seen through the eyes of Copernicus which monitors our planet and its extremes throughout the year.
Drought
The drought episode that affected Europe in 2022 could well be the worst in 500 years. It is attributable to a severe and persistent lack of precipitation, combined with a sequence of repeated heatwaves that have affected Europe from May to October.
The Combined Drought Indicator (which is published by the European Drought Observatory – EDO – as part of the Copernicus Emergency Management Service) reported that more than one-fourth of the EU territory was in “Alert” conditions in early September.
Figure 1. The historical drought affecting Europe as evidenced by the Combined Drought Indicator of the Copernicus Emergency Management Service (CEMS) European Drought Observatory for the first ten-day period of September 2022.
Most of France suffered from the consequences of an extreme drought. After an exceptionally dry and hot spring, water levels in rivers and reservoirs were exceptionally low, forcing French authorities to impose water restriction measures: in July 2022, 90 out of the 96 administrative “départements” were affected. These measures have severely impacted various aspect of everyday life and the economy of the country, such as the agriculture and hydro-power sectors. These two images, acquired just one year apart by Copernicus Sentinel-3 satellites, on 21 July 2021 and 22 July 2022, provide a vivid testimony of the exceptional drought which affected France.
Figure 2. The dryness of vegetation resulting from the drought in France over the summer of 2022 is visible when comparing Copernicus Sentinel-3 acquired in July 2021 (left) and July 2022 (right).
Heatwaves
2022 was also characterised by intense, and in some areas prolonged, heatwaves which affected Europe and the rest of the world, breaking several surface air temperature records. As reported in the July 2022 Climate Bulletin published by the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), July 2022 was one of the three warmest months of July on record globally and the sixth warmest July in Europe. The image below, created using C3S data, shows the Surface Air Temperature Anomaly for July 2022. As highlighted by the darkest shaded red colour, temperature anomalies reached peaks of +4ºC in Italy, France, and Spain.
Figure 3. Surface Air Temperature anomaly in Europe for July 2022. Visualisation based on Copernicus Climate Change Service data.
Furthermore, according to the C3S Climate Bulletin for September 2022, Greenland has experienced the warmest average temperatures registered for a month of September since 1979.
In particular, in September 2022, Surface Air Temperatures were more than 8°C higher (darkest shaded red colour in Figure 4) than the 1991-2020 September average.
Figure 4. Surface Air Temperature anomaly in Greenland for September 2022. Visualisation based on Copernicus Climate Change Service data.
Sea Temperatures
Although not directly related to climate change, the third consecutive year of La Niña has contributed to the extreme weather events in several parts of the world.
In 2022, precipitation patterns in many regions of the world have been typical of La Niña episodes: drier than usual conditions in Patagonia in South America and southwest North America, as well as in East Africa, according to WMO’s provisional State of the Global Climate 2022 report. The visualisation below shows the distinctive negative thermal anomaly in the Pacific Ocean visible in the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service data of 13 September 2022.
Figure 5. Distinctive La Niña negative Sea Surface Temperature anomaly in the Pacific Ocean. Visualisation based on Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service data.
Another extreme phenomenon of 2022 was the marine heatwave that affected the Mediterranean Sea in the summer of 2022. The visualisation below, based on data from the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS), shows the Sea Surface Temperature (SST) anomaly in July 2022 in the Mediterranean Sea, to which the heatwave in Europe certainly contributed.
As shown in the visualisation, the SST anomalies reached peaks of +5°C above average in some parts of the Mediterranean Sea off the Italian North-Western and the French South-Eastern coasts.
Figure 6. Sea Surface Temperature anomaly of the Mediterranean Sea recorded on 22 July 2022. Visualisation based on Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS) data.
Sea Ice extent
Another extreme phenomenon worth mentioning is evidenced by the alarming values of sea ice extent reported by the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S). In June and July 2022, Antarctic sea ice extent reached its lowest monthly value in 44 years of satellite data records, at 9% and 7% below average respectively. The southern Atlantic and Pacific oceans saw widespread areas of below-average sea ice concentration from the Amundsen and Bellingshausen Seas to the northern Weddell Sea, as well as in most of the Indian Ocean.
The alarming trend persisted throughout the year, with below-average sea ice concentrations in the Arctic and Antarctica even in the last months of 2022.
The monthly average Arctic sea ice extent in September 2022 reached 5.4 million km2, 0.7 million km2 (or 11%) below the 1991-2020 average for the month of September. This is the month during which the annual minimum sea ice extent is generally reached in the Arctic. On the other hand, Antarctic sea ice extent reached 18.5 million km2 on average, 0.6 million km2 (3%) below the 1991-2020 average for September.
Figure 7. Sea ice concentration in the Arctic and Antarctic seas and respective anomalies for September 2022. Visualisation based on Copernicus Climate Change Service data.
Floods
Several countries have been affected by extreme flooding events throughout 2022. However, none of them is comparable to the historical floods which hit Pakistan.
Exceptional monsoon rains have struck the country during the summer, causing disastrous floods which affected more than 33 million people and caused at least 1,400 casualties.
As shown in this collage, composed of three images acquired by the Copernicus Sentinel-3 satellites on 26 September 2021 (before), 31 August and 10 September 2022 (as the floods were ongoing), large areas of the country remained flooded for weeks, in particular in the Sindh Region, one of the most affected areas.
Figure 8. Collage of Copernicus Sentinel-3 images acquired on 26 September 2021, 31 August and 10 September 2022 over flooded areas in Pakistan.
The Copernicus Emergency Management Service (CEMS) has closely monitored the floods with its new and ground-breaking Global Flood Monitoring (GFM) tool. Likewise, the CEMS Rapid Mapping Team has been activated twice. More details are available here and here.
Figure 9. Data visualisation combining CEMS Rapid Mapping and Global Flood Monitoring data. The blue areas show the maximum extent of flooded area between 15 and 30 August as reported by GFM, while the zoom shows a detail from the Rapid Mapping Delineation Product for the Shikarpur AoI.
Wildfires
The summer of 2022 has seen a wildfire crisis in Europe of exceptional intensity and extent. According to the CEMS European Forest Fire Information Service (EFFIS), as of 17 December 2022, more than 786,000 hectares have burnt in the European Union while a total of more than 2,700 wildfires have been recorded. The area burnt in 2022 is almost 2.5 times above the 2006-2021 average.
The following are examples of wildfires imagery acquired by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellites during the summer of 2022:
Spain has been the European country most affected, with more than 300,000 ha burned. As shown in this image acquired by one of the Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellites on 25 June, a disastrous wildfire ravaged the province of Zamora, in the Castilla y León region. The CEMS Rapid Mapping team was activated (EMSR580) by the Spanish authorities to support the monitoring of the wildfire. The final Grading Product reported a total burnt area of 25,216 ha.
Figure 10. Devasting wildfire in Sierra de la Culebra, Spain, as seen by a Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite on 25 June 2022.
On Saturday 23 July 2022, a forest fire ignited on the famous touristic hotspot of Lesvos Island, in the Aegean Sea, in Greece. The next day, the Greek General Secretariat for Civil Protection tasked the CEMS Rapid Mapping team to produce delineation and damage grading maps of the wildfire (EMSR607).
Figure 11. Image acquired by one of the Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellites on 24 July 2022, one day after the start of the wildfire in Lesvos, Greece.
In August 2022, two major wildfires affected southwestern France, and in particular the Gironde and Landes départements. The visualisation below combines the image acquired by one of the Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellites on 11 August and data from CEMS. The wildfire started in an area adjacent to the one devastated by the furious fires of early July 2022 which had burned more than 18,000 ha. The CEMS Rapid Mapping team was also activated for this wildfire (EMSR592). The detailed maps produced are available here.
Figure 12. Image acquired by one of the Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellites on 11 August 2022 overlaid with data from the EMSR592 CEMS Rapid Mapping Activation.
Conclusion
The events of 2022 teach us that the concept of what is “extreme” must be redefined.
In this alarming context Copernicus has proved to be extremely useful, helping to forecast, monitor and subsequently assess the consequences of climate and weather extremes.
Thanks to the vast amount of open and science-based data produced by the Copernicus services, the European Union has an extra arrow in its bow to better understand, forecast and mitigate the consequences of a changing climate, design better policies and respond more efficiently to disasters.
Thu, 29/12/2022 – 12:00
