Viet Nam Human Rights
The assessment comes as record-breaking heat waves, devasting floods and drought struck across three continents in recent weeks. “This report has been prepared in exceptional circumstances, and this is an unprecedented IPCC approval session,” Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Chair, Hoesung Lee, told the opening session of the meeting.
The report, Climate Change 2021: the Physical Science Basis, by IPCC Working Group I brings together the latest advances in climate science and multiple lines of evidence to provide an up-to-date physical understanding of the climate system and climate change.
‘Climate crossroads’
“Assessments and special reports have been foundational to our understanding of climate change, the severe and growing risks it poses throughout the world and the urgent need for action to address it,” said UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Patricia Espinosa, on Monday.
But she warned that the world is at a “climate crossroads” and decisions taken this year would determine whether it will be possible to limit global warming to 1.5°C above the pre-industrial era by the end of the century.
3 degrees looming
“The world is currently on the opposite track, heading for a 3°C rise,” she said. “We need to change course urgently.”
Following the recent deadly flooding in several western European countries, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) called for all nations to do more to hold back climate change-induced disasters.
“Climate change is already very visible. We don’t have to tell people that it exists,” WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas told the opening session. “We are seeing more extreme events. Heatwaves, drought and the flooding events in Europe and China,” he said.
“Massive heating” in the Arctic is affecting the atmospheric dynamics in the northern hemisphere, as evidenced by stagnant weather systems and changes in the behaviour of the jet stream, added the WMO chief.
‘Science has spoken’
Some 234 authors have contributed to the assessment, which will provide the latest detailed assessment on past warming and future warming projections; show how and why the climate has changed and include an improved understanding of human influence on the climate.
There will also be a greater focus on regional information that can be used for climate risk assessments.
Time for action
“We have been telling the world that science has spoken and it’s now up to the policymakers for action”, said IPCC Chair Hoesung Lee.
The meeting is being held remotely from 26 July to 6 August, with the aim of ensuring that the summary for policymakers is accurate, well-balanced and presents the scientific findings clearly.
Subject to the decisions of the panel, the report will be released on 9 August, just weeks ahead of the UN General Assembly opening, a G20 summit, and the 197-nation COP26 climate summit in Glasgow. The document is the first part of the Sixth Assessment Report, which will be will be finalised in 2022.
All comments [ 20 ]
Global climate change has already had observable effects on the environment. Glaciers have shrunk, ice on rivers and lakes is breaking up earlier, plant and animal ranges have shifted and trees are flowering sooner.
Effects that scientists had predicted in the past would result from global climate change are now occurring: loss of sea ice, accelerated sea level rise and longer, more intense heat waves.
Taken as a whole, the range of published evidence indicates that the net damage costs of climate change are likely to be significant and to increase over time.
Scientists have high confidence that global temperatures will continue to rise for decades to come, largely due to greenhouse gases produced by human activities.
the extent of climate change effects on individual regions will vary over time and with the ability of different societal and environmental systems to mitigate or adapt to change.
Global climate is projected to continue to change over this century and beyond.
The magnitude of climate change beyond the next few decades depends primarily on the amount of heat-trapping gases emitted globally, and how sensitive the Earth’s climate is to those emissions.
Because human-induced warming is superimposed on a naturally varying climate, the temperature rise has not been, and will not be, uniform or smooth across the country or over time.
The largest increases in the frost-free season (more than eight weeks) are projected particularly in high elevation and coastal areas. The increases will be considerably smaller if heat-trapping gas emissions are reduced.
Summer temperatures are projected to continue rising, and a reduction of soil moisture
Hurricane-associated storm intensity and rainfall rates are projected to increase as the climate continues to warm.
In the next several decades, storm surges and high tides could combine with sea level rise and land subsidence to further increase flooding in many regions.
The global warming that’s changing our climate is already having dire consequences.
We humans are the ones who burn fossil fuels and chop down forests, causing average temperatures to rise worldwide. That global warming trend is increasingly disrupting our climate — the average weather over many years.
Earth has already warmed by about 1 degree Celsius, or 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit, since the 19th century, before industry started to boom.
A warmer world — even by a half-degree Celsius — has more evaporation, leading to more water in the atmosphere. Such changing conditions put our agriculture, health, water supply and more at risk.
Whether it’s a shift of 1.5 degrees or 2 degrees, these warming levels aren’t magic thresholds. Every rise in warming is worse for the planet than the last.But they're not inevitable.
It's not too late to slow the pace of climate change as long as we act today. With your help, we can attack this challenge.
The main driver of climate change is the greenhouse effect. Some gases in the Earth's atmosphere act a bit like the glass in a greenhouse, trapping the sun's heat and stopping it from leaking back into space and causing global warming.
2011-2020 was the warmest decade recorded, with global average temperature reaching 1.1°C above pre-industrial levels in 2019. Human-induced global warming is presently increasing at a rate of 0.2°C per decade.
Your comments