On April 22, two major institutes, the World Meteorological Organization and the European Copernicus Observatory, signed a press release warning of the importance of warming on the Old Continent. “The three hottest years on record in Europe have all occurred since 2020we can read before a definitive observation: It is the fastest warming continent, with temperatures rising about twice as fast as the global average. » A publication which highlights a fundamental aspect of climatology, made even more crucial in an era marked by change linked to human activities: not all places on the planet are warming in the same way.
“This is one of the characteristics of the Earth system, climate changes are not uniform in space, with notably more marked temperature variations on the continents and in the vicinity of the Arctic, summarizes Aurélien Ribes, researcher at Météo-France at the National Center for Meteorological Research (CNRM, CNRS). This was the case during the last ice age, and it is also the case today, with significant differences in the amplitude of human-caused global warming depending on the area. »
In its sixth assessment report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) identifies the areas where temperatures are increasing the fastest. Semi-arid regions, those located at mid-latitudes like a large part of the United States and China, and regions affected by the South American monsoon in Brazil are experiencing an increase twice as fast as the global average.
Read the summary (2023): Article reserved for our subscribers The IPCC synthesis report, “a practical guide to defusing the climate time bomb”
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“The Arctic is expected to see the largest temperature increase on the coldest days, about three times the rate of global warming”, write the scientists while equatorial regions are experiencing less rapid change and some areas are cooling, for example part of the North Atlantic, south of Greenland, due to a slowdown in heat evaporation. Europe is bearing the brunt of this reality. According to Copernicus data, it has warmed by 2.3°C since the pre-industrial era compared to 1.2°C to 1.3°C for the global average.
More intense, more frequent heatwaves
These thousand nuances in global change have several causes. Studied for a very long time, the polar amplification, very significant in the Arctic, is caused mainly by a positive feedback loop: the melting of the ice reduces the albedo, that is to say the capacity of the earth to reflect the rays of the sun. The greater warming of Europe is partly explained by this drop in albedo in the most northern regions and in the countries of central and eastern Europe which are experiencing a reduction in snow cover.
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