According to the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report, scientists are seeing changes in the Earth’s climate in every region and across the whole climate system, including the atmosphere, seas, icebergs, and land.
The report warns that many of these changes are unprecedented, and some are already happening, while others, such as sea-level rise, are already ‘irreversible. However, there is still time to slow climate change. Strong and sustained reductions in carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gas emissions might improve air quality immediately, and global temperatures could stabilize in 20 to 30 years.
‘Red Alert for Humanity’
This is the second report from the United Nations-backed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in less than six months, with two more reports due before the end of the year. Researchers in the most recent volume focused on nations’ inability to cope with climatic instability and the increased stress of higher temperatures, which are presently 1.1° Celsius over pre-industrial levels.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres described the Working Group’s report as “A red alert for humanity” He stated that pre-industrial levels of global warming have been exceeded dangerously. We are on the threshold of exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius soon. The only option to avoid crossing this threshold is to increase our efforts immediately and pursue the most ambitious path.
Among the new report’s findings:
- In certain locations, the consequences of melting glaciers and thawing permafrost are “approaching irreversibility.”
- During parts of the year, half of the globe already experiences a “serious water shortage.”
- Without adaptation, a worldwide increase in heat-related illness and death, as well as an increase in food-borne and infectious diseases.
- Agricultural productivity has decreased, and weather extremes have affected the food security of millions of people.
- At a 1.5°C increase in temperature, up to 14% of animal species are expecting to face extinction.
50 years of heat
The report, prepared by 234 scientists from 66 nations, claims that human activity has warmed the climate at an unprecedented rate in at least the previous 2,000 years. In 2019, atmospheric CO2 concentrations were more than they had been in at least 2 million years, while methane and nitrous oxide concentrations were higher than they had been in the previous 800,000 years.
Since 1970, global surface temperature has risen faster than during any previous 50-year period in the last 2,000 years. Temperatures over the most recent decade (2011–2020), for example, exceed those of the previous multi-century warm period, which occurred roughly 6,500 years ago, according to the report.
Meanwhile, the global mean sea level has risen faster since 1900 than it has in the previous 3,000 years. The report reveals that human-caused greenhouse gas emissions are responsible for approximately 1.1°C of warming between 1850 and 1900 and that global temperature is about to reach or will exceed 1.5°C during the next 20 years on average.
Climate risks, according to the report, are more strongly linking to vulnerabilities building into social systems in the short term than to the world’s emissions trajectory.
To avoid “cascading and compounding” damages to human and environmental systems, the world must gradually shift from sluggish, piecemeal adaptation methods toward a comprehensive program of anticipatory, resilient planning and development. This involves cooperation across all sectors of society and at all levels of government — and it must happen fast before the world’s temperature reaches critical levels. Further delays in both emissions reduction and adaptation will become increasingly costly, both physically and economically.
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