New UN climate report Released Monday morning He explains in stark terms how climate change is already wreaking havoc on the world, warning that any additional warming will only lead to more severe disasters.
“It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, oceans and land,” according to a summary summarizing the report’s findings for policy makers. “Man-made climate change is already affecting many extreme weather and climate events in every region around the world.”
The forthcoming report is part of Sixth Climate Assessment Released by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which provides a comprehensive scientific view of the impacts of the climate crisis to date and an analysis of just how bad it could be.
The latest report differs from previous editions by explicitly pointing to the cause of the climate crisis: human-caused climate pollution. The report warns that deadly heat waves, torrential rains, droughts and other disasters will increase in intensity and frequency without reducing human emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases.
Hundreds of scholars around the world contributed to the report and its main findings, which are outlined in the Policymaker’s Summary. Additional reports will come in the next year and a half: a second report will look at who is most vulnerable to persistent climate impacts and how to best prepare for them, while a third will focus on how to prevent further warming.
The announcement of definitive blaming human activity is “the strongest statement ever made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,” Coe Barrett, Vice President of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Senior Climate Adviser to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said in a press call Sunday. climate at all.
The findings of the new report are likely to add to the pressure facing world leaders who will meet in Glasgow in November as part of their ongoing participation in the Paris climate agreement.
If the world’s nations come together and collectively reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases to net zero by 2050 – the stated goal of the Paris climate agreement – global warming and some other climate impacts could be slowed and even reversed, according to the report.
Acting aggressively now could ensure that “the next two decades of global warming could be some of our last,” Kim Cobb, one of the report’s authors and a climate professor at Georgia Tech, said on the press call. “That’s really for me the important thing to keep in mind here.”
Summer was a long series of disasters. a Record-breaking heat wave Hundreds killed In the Pacific Northwest, Canada. Severe floods in Germany More than 100 people were killed and hundreds more are missing. Thousands have been displaced before floods in china. while, Ongoing forest fires raging all over the world, from California NS Greece NS Siberia.
Disasters happen frequently and intensely, and this is just one of the ways the IPCC report says the planet has been altered by climate change:
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Earth’s surface temperatures It has so far increased by about 1.1°C since pre-industrial times. This rate of man-made warming is unprecedented for at least 2,000 years.
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heat waves Rainfall events are becoming more frequent and intense all over the world.
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Drought It also condenses.
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As the upper levels of the ocean warmed, ocean acidification increased, and there was a decrease in Arctic sea ice.
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The frequency of marine heat waves has doubled since the 1980s.
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worldwide Sea levels have already risen By about half a foot, the rate of sea rise is increasing as glaciers are melting and the oceans are expanding with heat. The rate of sea level rise observed since 1900 is the fastest in at least 3,000 years.
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and concurrent Many glaciers have shrunk unprecedented in the last 2,000 years of Earth’s history.
And what is around the corner if humans do not stop emitting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is much worse.
According to the summary report, “With each additional increase in global warming, changes in extremes continue to increase.” Extreme heat events, such as heat waves, which occur on average every 10 years in a world without man-made climate change, are now likely to occur approximately 2.8 times per decade.
And if the planet continues to warm, so fatal events will become more likely. With a temperature rise of 1.5°C, extreme heat waves and other events can occur 4.1 times per decade, while two degrees of warming can increase the frequency to 5.6 times. The most worrisome scenario, 4 degrees of warming, would have fatal heat events that occur nearly every year.
And it’s not just extreme temperatures. For every additional 0.5°C of warming, the IPCC report warns of an expected increase in the frequency and intensity of heavy rain events, as well as agricultural and environmental droughts. Rising temperatures also increase the chance of simultaneous disasters, such as heat waves and droughts occurring at the same time.
But as bad as things can get, the report stresses that swift and decisive action on climate change could reverse some of its effects. A rapid effort not only to stop the emission of greenhouse gases but also to pull them out of the air, and achieve negative emissions, would lead to a reversal in surface temperatures and acidification of the ocean surface.
Unfortunately, not all climatic influences can be stopped. For example, some global sea level rise is now inevitable. “Sea level change during the mid-century, around 2050, has been largely restricted,” said Bob Cobb, co-author of a brief report. “No matter how quickly we reduce our emissions, we are probably looking at a global sea level rise of about 15 to 30 centimeters, or about 6 to 12 inches.”
After this point, he added, “sea-level forecasts become increasingly sensitive to the emissions choices we make today.” Under two degrees of warming, sea level will rise about 1.5 feet by 2100; Below 4 degrees, the water level could rise more than 2 feet during this century.
“Many severe impacts can be avoided, but they really require unprecedented transformational change,” Barrett said. “I think the idea that there is still a way forward is a point that should give us some hope.”
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