No, the globe is not actually cooling

WITH respect to recent reports from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), I’m not sure which one Gareth Jones could have been reading when he writes in his recent letter about global temperatures cooling?

The headline of the WMO press release on November 6 was: “Eight warmest years on record witness upsurge in climate change impacts.” In its Provisional State of the Global Climate in 2022 report (https:// public.wmo.int/en/our-mandate/ climate/wmo-statement-state-ofglobal-climate), the WMO notes that global warming continues, and that the 10-year average global temperature for the period 20132022 is estimated to be 1.14°C above the 1850-1900 pre-industrial baseline, compared with 1.09°C for 2011-2020.

Mr Jones clearly is unable to distinguish short-term fluctuations driven by phenomena, such as the current rare triple-dip cooling La Niña, from the inexorable long-term trend of rising temperatures fuelled by ever-increasing concentrations of the main greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, which again reached record levels in 2021.

He either inadvertently or deliberately skipped over the sections of the WMO report which details record-shattering ice melt in the European Alps in 2022, record heat content in the oceans in 2021 (the most recent year for which data are available) and a rise in mean global sea-level of nearly 10mm since January 2020 to a new record high in 2022. Mr Jones also chooses to ignore the extreme weather events recorded this year in East Africa, Pakistan, southern Africa, China and large parts of Europe.

Despite the rather lame attempts of Mr Jones in trying to persuade us that the globe is actually cooling, there is no prospect of the trend of rising temperatures caused by human activity being reversed in the near future, although it is to be hoped governments will take action to moderate further rises and to avoid potential tipping points in the Earth’s climate system.

Professor Bruce Webb

Exeter, Devon