Thanks for joining us on 9 News Plus.
I'm Chris Bianchi.
Well, it is the start of a new year,
which means we're also
looking back on 2022 as well.
And specifically, we wanted to take a
look back at global temperatures and
see the acceleration of climate change.
So to do so, we caught up with Sarah Kapnick,
chief scientist at Noah,
for a bit more on just how warm
things were in 2022 in the
US and across the globe.
Sir, thanks so much for joining us today.
So NASA, NOAA, just releasing the
global temperature data for 2022.
Where did we find the rankings for the past
year in terms of hottest years on record?
For Noah's record,
we found it was the 6th hottest
year on record out of 143 years.
NASA found a similar ranking of
the 5th hottest year on record.
And how long back do those records go for?
143 years, so going back
to the 18, late 1800s,
OK. So 2022 obviously part of a
kind of a larger climate record.
So how did the changes that you're observing
impact people and society as a whole?
So when you have these
increases in temperatures,
you increase the likelihood
for extreme heat events.
So heat waves on land and in the ocean,
you get marine heat waves.
So they actually look very similar
to land where there are these
pockets of regions that get much,
much warmer than they were around it.
And on average, it also impacts
other types of the climate system,
increases the strength of the water cycle.
The atmosphere can hold more water
when it's warmer and so as a result.
We have increases in rainfall and extreme
rainfall happening around the world,
but it also increases the likelihood
and magnitude of droughts and it also
changes certain types of storms and
so it affects many different types
of weather and climate phenomena.
I guess this one thing that's
striking to me is that we had our
6th warmest year on record globally,
despite the fact that we had a La
Nina event in the Pacific Ocean,
which is the cooling of a course of
Pacific Ocean sea surface temperatures.
Can we glean what would happen
if we potentially had an El
Nino in the coming years?
Yeah. Some estimates of the dampening
effect of the La Nina right now is that
it was .1 degrees Celsius of dampening.
And so if you in the absence of ladina
and actually this is the third lania
that we've had in a row, it would have
actually been a little bit warmer.
So that's obviously part of
everything that's going on as well.
That said, I know that NASA Noah
combining to launch some new satellites
to help study the Earth this year.
How do these help us understand both our
climate as well as our day-to-day weather?
Yeah. Satellites are critical for being
able to have a total snapshot on the Earth.
And so they allow us to have enhanced
information on where is the water vapor,
what are the temperatures,
where the winds going.
So we can actually integrate all of
this information into an understanding,
a snapshot of the earth and then using
that to drive our weather models to
be able to improve our forecasts.
They are also really important
for just monitoring the planet.
For the report that we have launched
today on monitoring temperatures,
they're really important.
Just filling in the gaps in places
where we don't have weather stations.
And you mentioned some of those
impacts to the drought overall and
as well we're based here in Colorado.
So I'm kind of curious as to what you
have gathered in terms of the rising
temperatures and its potential impacts
on the West as well as Colorado's
drought over the last few years.
There in the in the peak of the season,
it was 91% of the American West
was under drought conditions.
That is manifested by increases also
in potential for wildfire and it's
also led to a lot of the reservoirs
reaching record lows for you in Colorado.
This drought, but also the higher
temperatures is also leading to less of
the snowpack that actually forms in the
mountains being translated into river flows.
So as a result when you're in these drugs.
Conditions.
It takes more and more snow from
the past to actually translate
into river flows that then actually
refill those reservoirs.
So kind of a continuing cycle,
what do we expect to see in the future?
Yeah, so really short term, Noah,
we released today that we expect neutral
conditions for El Nino by the spring.
We'll see what happens as that
continues in the next few years though,
we do expect that we are going to
continue on this warming trend.
Our statistical model show
that we expect that next year,
this year 2023 will likely be another
warm year, one of the warmest.
And on record statistically and
we're going to continue to see this
March towards warmer and warmer
temperatures on average until we
no longer have the greenhouse gas
emissions going into the atmosphere.
And where can we learn more about
the impacts of climate as well as
impacts to individual state cities?
You can find information on noaa.gov.
I would also direct you to climate.gov,
which has a lot of information about
local communities and how climate
is changing around the country,
and even has educational information.
For heat and drought, I was also
sending to heat.gov and drought.gov,
which are our one stop shops for this
across the entire federal government.
Well, thank you, Sarah.
Catholic NASA chief scientist,
thank you so much for
joining us here today.
I'm knows Chief scientist and it
was a pleasure to meet with you.
My apologies. But Sarah,
thank you so much for joining us
here today. We appreciate it.
Thank you so much for having me.