The year 2022 saw a lot of change. The external changes shape both the actual environment and how we discuss it. Unique words and phrases constantly appear in today’s overheated society while others acquire new interpretations. Let us look at some of the notable climate words or phrases of 2022 that defined the climate conditions of this year.

List of Climate Words or Phrases of 2022

1. Danger Season

Danger season addresses the months of May through October, which are notorious for wildfires, storms, and heat waves. Erika Spanger-Siegfried, an analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists, invented the expression to bring awareness towards anthropogenic global warming and how this has amplified summertime dangers.

An estimated 20,000 people died due to a “heat dome” over France, Germany, Spain, and Britain that experts stated would have been “nearly unthinkable” without climate change.

Source: Formation of a heat dome

2. Flash Droughts

Sudden dry spells, known as “flash droughts,” are characterized by hot, dry air that evaporates moisture from the soil and vegetation. The terrain can quickly become parched by flash droughts, which can appear in a short of a week.

Massachusetts’ cranberry season was jeopardized in August when one such flash drought swept most of the Northeast. The whole state of Oklahoma entered a drought in July due to 100-degree days drying up the ground. According to research published earlier this year, sudden droughts like this are becoming more frequent and severe as the climate warms.

For instance, the Central United States has had a more than 20% rise in flash droughts over the previous 20 years.

3. Heat Pump

A heat pump is an effective heating and cooling system that “pumps” heat from one location to another. They are incredibly energy-efficient because they transfer heat rather than produce it, requiring far more energy efficiency than conventional heaters. The writer and Carbon Switch creator Michael Thomas referred to them as the most underestimated climate answer.

Heat pumps were a vital element in the European Union’s effort to reduce its reliance on Russian natural gas after Russia invaded Ukraine in February. The US has also seen more use of this technology. The first state to mandate all-electric heating in new construction was Washington.

4. Heatflation

Heatflation is the term used when high temperatures cause price hikes. Costs for all kinds of goods are reportedly rising due to climate change. Amid harvesting season in October, food costs in the US were 10.9% higher than they had been the previous year, above the 7.7% rate of total inflation. One cause of the surge was probably the extreme heat.

Summer months had by far the strongest and lengthiest influence on food costs, according to a study conducted by the European Central Bank last year that looked at seasonal temperatures and price indicators in 48 nations. Increasing lumber costs and insurance rates are also related to climate change.

5. IRA

IRA is the abbreviation for the Inflation Reduction Act. Democrats picked the phrase to attract voters when inflation was a significant concern. The IRA allocates $369 billion to energy-saving and renewable energy initiatives, including grants to improve air quality in underserved areas and tax credits to encourage clean energy projects.

6. Nature-Rinsing

A prime example of nature rinsing is using natural images in marketing to seem ecologically friendly.

Carbon-emitting businesses have long sought to repair their image by using pictures of wild animals, rich landscapes, and greenery. According to marketing studies, these strategies frequently work, with commercials including nature inspiring positive emotions and enhancing consumers’ perceptions of the advertiser’s brand.

A study examining roughly 34,000 social media postings from European businesses this summer found that 97 percent of airline posts and significantly more than half of those from automakers and energy corporations included images connected to the environment.

7. Overshoot

Overshoot is a politically attractive but scientifically dubious scenario in which the globe exceeds its climate targets and lowers temperatures. Generally speaking, the world certainly will exceed the desired temperature of 1.5 degrees C. However, as noted in a major assessment from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in February, several of the rising global temperature catastrophic effects will prove to be permanent. This presents a challenge for those who are counting on this twist of fate.

Extinct organisms will not reappear, coral reefs may go extinct for good, and the global sea level will remain high due to ice glaciers that melted into the ocean. A warmer environment may also trigger feedback loops that cause degraded trees to continue emitting their enormous carbon reserves.

8. Range Anxiety

This expression captures the fear that your vehicle may break down in the middle of a journey.

Electric cars buzzed their way to the forefront in 2022. However, range anxiety deters some consumers from purchasing them. According to research published in May, many Americans and Germans believed incorrectly that an electric car couldn’t fulfill all of their demands. By up to 30%, survey participants overestimated how many everyday chores an electric vehicle could carry out.

Educating automobile owners about how readily most of their needs can be met by these cars should hasten the uptake of low-emission vehicles. A vast network of charging stations, which states will begin constructing throughout the Interstate Highway System with the support of $5 billion, might also make drivers feel less concerned about becoming stuck.

9. Real Zero

For over a decade, businesses and governments have been proclaiming their plans to become “net zero,” promising to absorb all the carbon they produce, sometimes by some improbable date. Although the concept is sound, in theory, detractors claim that these commitments may be taken advantage of.

NextEra, the firm that controls Florida Power & Light and is a major participant in renewable energy and natural gas, came up with the phrase “real zero” in June to respond to vague net-zero claims.

Without using carbon offsets or carbon capture, a corporation would really eliminate its emissions under the trademarked term. That is, there are actually no emissions. The real-zero objective may be admirable, but the idea of voluntary corporate goals as a whole has come under fire for its failure: According to recent research, 93% of major international corporations were on course to fall short of their carbon reduction goals.

10. Soup Thrower

The word in the list of climate words or phrases of 2022 that defined the climate conditions of this year is Soup Thrower. Most people throughout the world are familiar with this word. Two protesters from the Just Stop Oil movement threw tomato soup over Vincent van Gogh’s famous Sunflowers artwork in the National Gallery in London in October of this year.

Source: Climate protestors after throwing soup over Vincent Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers. “

Then, in Germany, protesters threw mashed potatoes at a Claude Monet picture. The food-launching strategy prompted museums to increase security and spurred a heated discussion about whether or not such an attention-getting strategy was beneficial or detrimental to the cause. Activists are increasingly resorting to civil disobedience as a result of their frustration with the world’s sluggish progress toward the phase-out of fossil fuels.