Europe is the fastest warming continent in the world, a WMO and Copernicus report warns

Europe is the fastest warming continent in the world, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the European Copernicus network.

The continent has been warming twice as much as the global average since the 1980s, the two organisations show in their joint annual State of the Climate report, released on Monday 19 June.

In 2022, Europe was approximately 2.3°C warmer than it was at the end of the 19th century. 

Warming has soared since the 1990s, breaking temperature records on several occasions. 

Some areas have seen more extreme changes than others, with temperatures around 2°C above average in much of Western Europe and even exceeding 3.5°C in regions close to the Arctic.

The summer of 2022 was the hottest on record in many European countries.

According to the report, extreme weather-related eventsclaimed more than 16,000 lives and directly affected 156,000 people. Flooding and storms were the most economically damaging, while heatwaves were the most deadly.

Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland and the UK were among the countries that broke temperature records.

“The record-breaking heat stress that Europeans experienced in 2022 was one of the main drivers of weather-related excess deaths in Europe," says Dr Carlo Buontempo, Director of Copernicus Climate Change Service.

"Unfortunately, this cannot be considered a one-off occurrence or an oddity of the climate," he continues, adding that heat stress extremes are likely to become more frequent and more intense across the region.

Sea surface temperatures around Europe also reached new highs, accompanied by marine heatwaves. 

Surface ocean warming soared to more than three times the global average in the eastern Mediterra