Global Warming

Landmark UN Climate Report

A newly released IPCC report shows that global heating is widespread, rapid and intensifying, and that extreme weather such as wildfires and floods will become more commonplace unless drastic and sustained changes are made – urgently.

The report, based on 14,000 scientific publications from around the world and prepared by 234 scientists from 66 countries, is the most comprehensive and up-to-date account of the physical science basis of human-caused climate change. It conclusively and definitively explains that human influence has warmed the climate at an unprecedented rate for at least the past 2,000 years. It is the first in a series of reports to be published over the coming months.

Some of the headline statements to emerge from the sobering report include:

“It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land. Widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and biosphere have occurred.”

“Human-induced climate change is already affecting many weather and climate extremes in every region across the globe. Evidence of observed changes in extremes such as heatwaves, heavy precipitation, droughts, and tropical cyclones, and, in particular, their attribution to human influence, has strengthened since the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5).”

“Many changes in the climate system become larger in direct relation to increasing global warming. They include increases in the frequency and intensity of hot extremes, marine heatwaves, and heavy precipitation, agricultural and ecological droughts in some regions, and proportion of intense tropical cyclones, as well as reductions in Arctic sea ice, snow cover and permafrost.”

“Continued global warming is projected to further intensify the global water cycle, including its variability, global monsoon precipitation and the severity of wet and dry events.”

“Many changes due to past and future greenhouse gas emissions are irreversible for centuries to millennia, especially changes in the ocean, ice sheets and global sea level.”

“Global surface temperature will continue to increase until at least the mid-century under all emissions scenarios considered. Global warming of 1.5°C and 2°C will be exceeded during the 21st century unless deep reductions in carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gas emissions occur in the coming decades.”

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