Forster, Piers M. and Smith, Christopher J. and Walsh, Tristram and Lamb, William F. and Lamboll, Robin and Hauser, Mathias and Ribes, Aurélien and Rosen, Debbie and Gillett, Nathan and Palmer, Matthew D. and Rogelj, Joeri and von Schuckmann, Karina and Seneviratne, Sonia I. and Trewin, Blair and Zhang, Xuebin and Allen, Myles and Andrew, Robbie and Birt, Arlene and Borger, Alex and Boyer, Tim and Broersma, Jiddu A. and Cheng, Lijing and Dentener, Frank and Friedlingstein, Pierre and Gutiérrez, José M. and Gütschow, Johannes and Hall, Bradley and Ishii, Masayoshi and Jenkins, Stuart and Lan, Xin and Lee, June-Yi and Morice, Colin and Kadow, Christopher and Kennedy, John and Killick, Rachel and Minx, Jan C. and Naik, Vaishali and Peters, Glen P. and Pirani, Anna and Pongratz, Julia and Schleussner, Carl-Friedrich and Szopa, Sophie and Thorne, Peter and Rohde, Robert and Rojas Corradi, Maisa and Schumacher, Dominik and Vose, Russell and Zickfeld, Kirsten and Masson-Delmotte, Valérie and Zhai, Panmao (2023) Indicators of Global Climate Change 2022: annual update of large-scale indicators of the state of the climate system and human influence. Earth System Science Data, 15 (6). pp. 2295-2327. ISSN 1866-3516

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Abstract

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessments are the trusted source of scientific evidence for climate negotiations taking place under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), including the first global stocktake under the Paris Agreement that will conclude at COP28 in December 2023. Evidence-based decision-making needs to be informed by up-to-date and timely information on key indicators of the state of the climate system and of the human influence on the global climate system. However, successive IPCC reports are published at intervals of 5–10 years, creating potential for an information gap between report cycles. We follow methods as close as possible to those used in the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) Working Group One (WGI) report. We compile monitoring datasets to produce estimates for key climate indicators related to forcing of the climate system: emissions of greenhouse gases and short-lived climate forcers, greenhouse gas concentrations, radiative forcing, surface temperature changes, the Earth’s energy imbalance, warming attributed to human activities, the remaining carbon budget, and estimates of global temperature extremes. The purpose of this effort, grounded in an open data, open science approach, is to make annually updated reliable global climate indicators available in the public domain (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8000192, Smith et al., 2023a). As they are traceable to IPCC report methods, they can be trusted by all parties involved in UNFCCC negotiations and help convey wider understanding of the latest knowledge of the climate system and its direction of travel. The indicators show that human-induced warming reached 1.14 [0.9 to 1.4] ◦C averaged over the 2013–2022 decade and 1.26 [1.0 to 1.6] ◦C in 2022. Over the 2013–2022 period, human-induced warming has been increasing at an unprecedented rate of over 0.2 ◦C per decade. This high rate of warming is caused by a combination of greenhouse gas emissions being at an all-time high of 54 ± 5.3 GtCO2e over the last decade, as well as reductions in the strength of aerosol cooling. Despite this, there is evidence that increases in greenhouse gas emissions have slowed, and depending on societal choices, a continued series of these annual updates over the critical 2020s decade could track a change of direction for human influence on climate.

Item Type:	Article
Keywords:	Indicators; Global Climate Change 2022; annual update; large-scale indicators; climate system; human influence;
Academic Unit:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Geography Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Institutes > Irish Climate Analysis and Research Units, ICARUS
Item ID:	17445
Identification Number:	https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-15-2295-2023
Depositing User:	Peter Thorne
Date Deposited:	17 Aug 2023 14:29
Journal or Publication Title:	Earth System Science Data
Publisher:	Copernicus Publications
Refereed:	Yes
URI:	Publisher
Use Licence:	This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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