Each of the last eight years, if projections for 2022 hold, will be hotter than any year before 2015, the UN said on Sunday, describing a dramatic increase in the rate of global warming.

Sea-level rise, melting glaciers, torrential rains, heat waves — and the deadly disasters they cause — have all accelerated, the World Meteorological Organization said in a report opening the UN climate summit COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

“As COP27 begins, our planet is sending out a distress signal,” said UN chief Antonio Guterres, describing the report as “a chronicle of climate chaos.”

The earth has warmed by more than 1.1 degrees Celsius since the late 19th century, with about half of that increase occurring in the past 30 years, the report shows.

Nearly 200 nations gathered in Egypt have set a target of keeping the temperature rise to 1.5°C (2.7°F), a target some scientists believe is now unattainable.

This year is on track to become the fifth or sixth warmest year on record, despite the impact of La Nina since 2020 — a periodic and naturally occurring Pacific phenomenon that is cooling the atmosphere.

“The greater the warming, the worse the impact,” said WMO chief Petteri Taalas.

The ocean’s surface waters – which absorb more than 90 percent of the accumulated heat from human carbon emissions – hit record temperatures in 2021 and have been warming particularly rapidly over the past 20 years.

Heat waves at sea also increased, devastating coral reefs and the half billion people who depend on them for food and livelihood.

Overall, 55 percent of the ocean’s surface experienced at least one marine heatwave in 2022, the report said.

Driven by melting ice sheets and glaciers, the rate of sea level rise has doubled over the past 30 years, threatening millions of people living in low-lying coastal areas.

“The messages in this report could hardly be darker,” said Mike Meredith, chief scientist at the British Antarctic Survey.

“Records are being broken all over our planet as different parts of the climate system begin to collapse.”

Greenhouse gases, which are responsible for more than 95 percent of warming, are all at record levels, with methane showing the largest one-year jump on record, according to the WMO’s annual state of the global climate.

The rise in methane emissions has been attributed to leaks in natural gas production and an increase in beef consumption.

In 2022, a cascade of extreme weather events, exacerbated by climate change, devastated communities around the world.

A two-month heatwave in South Asia in March and April that bore the unmistakable fingerprint of man-made warming was followed by floods in Pakistan that submerged a third of the country. At least 1,700 people died and eight million were displaced.

In East Africa, rainfall has been below average for four consecutive rainy seasons, the longest in 40 years, with 2022 set to deepen the drought.

China experienced the longest and most intense heat wave on record and the second driest summer.

Falling water levels disrupted or threatened commercial river traffic on the Yangtze River in China, the Mississippi River in the US and several major inland waterways in Europe, which also suffered repeated sweltering heat.

The poorer nations, least responsible for climate change but most vulnerable to its dire effects, suffered the most.

“But even well-prepared societies have been hit by extremes this year — as evidenced by the ongoing heatwaves and droughts across much of Europe and southern China,” Taalas said.

In the European Alps, glacier melt records were broken in 2022, with average thickness losses ranging from three to over four meters (ranging from 9.8 to over 13 feet), the highest ever recorded.

Switzerland has lost more than a third of its glacier volume since 2001.

“If there was ever a year to swamp, shred and burn the blinders of global climate inaction, it should be 2022,” said Dave Reay, director of the University of Edinburgh’s Climate Change Institute.

“The world now faces a monumental task of damage control.”