Between drought, floods and heat waves, the year 2022 gave a good overview of the consequences of climate change.

Immense efforts remain to be made to hope to keep the climate under control.

"The year 2022 will be among the hottest years on the globe, with all the phenomena that go with higher temperatures", sums up Robert Vautard, director of the Pierre-Simon Laplace Institute.

A series of extreme events have come to illustrate the accelerating impacts of global warming around the world.

The year 2022 still cooled by La Niña

In Pakistan, 33 million people have been affected by rains, floods and landslides.

Europe, for its part, experienced its hottest summer on record, with giant forest fires, dry rivers and sluggish crops.

"Unfortunately, this is only the beginning: we see in small what could happen to us in a big way", warns Robert Vautard.

The year 2022 is all the more remarkable as the La Niña phenomenon, which causes a cooling of part of the surface waters of the Pacific, has persisted.

When this phenomenon reverses, the world will likely climb a “new step” in global warming.

A disappointing COP27

This damning finding served as the backdrop for COP27 last November in Egypt.

The results were mixed, leaving many points to be settled by the 2023 edition. The creation of a specific financial fund to compensate for the damage caused by climate change in the poorest countries has been approved.

The project should now be put on track.

However, no new ambitions have been expressed regarding the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

"COP27 left us with a lot of work to do on mitigating" emissions, stresses Harjeet Singh, of the international NGO network Climate Action Network (CAN), as well as on "the end of all fossil fuels - coal, oil and gas”.



Many challenges for COP28 and the year 2023

COP28, to be held in Dubai in 2023, will be "the next vital step" in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, insists Harjeet Singh.

This COP will be an opportunity to discuss the problem of the oil and gas sector.

A subject that promises "great tension", according to observers, while the Emirates are one of the largest oil exporters in the world.

COP28 will also be an opportunity to publish a long-awaited global report taking stock of countries' commitments to the objectives of the Paris Agreement, which aims to contain global warming well below 2°C and if possible at 1.5°C.

This limit seems difficult to reach, the current trajectories tending towards a much more pronounced warming.

The climate will also be at the heart of meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in the spring and fall.

The last COP indeed resulted in “a formal request to look at the international financial system and to review the role of international financial institutions”, analyzes Laurence Tubiana, who participated in the Paris agreement.

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