Fact Check: No, the earth has not experienced cooling in the last eight years.
A look at 2022 annual global climate report shows that the warming trend has been continuing.
On January 16 this year, a verified twitter user posted a snapshot on their account showing a graph alleged to be from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
The user alleged that NOAA had published an article that the earth has experienced global cooling in the last eight years.
He stated that the earth has cooled at a rate of 0.11 degrees Celsius in the past decade despite 450+ billion tons of emissions worth 14 per cent of total man made carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
While ending the statement, he explained that carbon dioxide is a hoax. The tweet was retweeted 15,800 times, had 521 quote tweets and had 37,500 likes.
However, a look at 2022 annual global climate report shows that the warming trend has been continuing, noting that 2022 was the world’s sixth warmest year on record since 1880.
The report also stated that 2022 “marked the 46th-consecutive year (since 1977) with global temperatures rising above the 20th-century average.”
The report also showed that “the 10-warmest years on record have all occurred since 2010, with the last nine years (2014-2022) among the 10-warmest years.”
“Earth’s average land and ocean surface temperature in 2022 was 0.86 of a degree Celsius above the 20th-century average of 13.9 degrees Celsius — the sixth highest among all years in the 1880 to 2022 record.
The 2022 Northern Hemisphere surface temperature was also the sixth highest in the 143-year record at 1.10 degrees Celsius above average.
The Southern Hemisphere surface temperature for 2022 was the seventh highest on record at 0.61 of a degree Celsius above average,” said the report.
According to the report, global ocean heat content, which refers to the amount of heat stored in the upper 2000 metres of an ocean, was higher in 2022 as compared to 2021.
In another analysis conducted by scientists from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration(NASA), results showed that 2022 was the “earth’s fifth warmest year on record, tied with 2015.”
It showed that global temperatures from 2022 were 0.89 degrees Celsius, which was higher than the average temperature for the period between 1951 and 1980.
“This warming trend is alarming. Our warming climate is already making a mark: Forest fires are intensifying; hurricanes are getting stronger; droughts are wreaking havoc and sea levels are rising,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.
The Copernicus Climate Change Service, in its 2022 Global Climate Highlights to 2022 as a year of extremes, detailing that the year broke many temperature records in Europe and globally, and marked a continued increase in greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere.
“Europe saw its hottest summer ever recorded (the previous hottest summer was in 2021) and several prolonged and intense heat waves affected parts of western and northern Europe.
Autumn was the third warmest on record, only beaten by 2020 and 2006, while winter temperatures were around 1°C above average,” said the report.
“Globally, during 2022, the world experienced its fifth warmest year on record, according to the C3S ERA5 dataset. So far, the hottest years on record globally are 2016, 2020, 2019 and 2017 respectively. According to ERA5, the annual average temperature was 0.3 degrees Celsius above the reference period of 1991 to 2020, which equates to approximately 1.2 degrees Celsius higher than the period 1850 to 1900, typically used as a proxy for the pre-industrial era. This makes 2022 the eighth year in a row with temperatures more than one degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial level,” adds the report.
As regards increase in greenhouse concentrations, the report states that carbon dioxide concentrations increased by about 2.1 parts per million(ppm) as methane rose by around 12 ppm.
The result was an annual average of about 417 ppm for carbon dioxide and 1,894 for methane.
“For both gases this is the highest concentration from the satellite record, and by including other records, the highest levels for over 2 million years for carbon dioxide and over 800 000 years for methane,” said the report.
An IPCC Sixth Assessment Report released in 2021 also stated that earth’s average temperature is higher than it has been in 125,000 years, even as it projects that extreme weather events will continue to become severe.
“Earth’s global surface temperature has increased by around 1.1 degrees Celsius compared with the average in 1850–1900 — a level that hasn’t been witnessed since 125,000 years ago, before the most recent ice age,” said IPCC.
The report further notes that because of warming, climate change will bring more intense rainfall that may cause flooding, further warming that will exacerbate thawing of permafrost, cause rise in sea levels and possibly frequent and severe flooding in coastal areas.
This fact check was produced by Daily Nation with support from Code for Africa’s Pesa Check, International Fact Checking Network and African Fact Checking Alliance Network
