Early Warnings: In September 2013, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released the first part of its Fifth Assessment Report, addressing the physical science of climate change.
That report, the first from the panel since a 2011 special report, makes the strongest assertion to date that humans are driving climate change. It says that it is 95 percent certain (up from 90 percent stated in the previous report) that “human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.”
The report also contains ominous warnings about what to expect if nations are unable to curb greenhouse gas emissions, including sea level rise of up to 39 inches by the end of the century and global surface temperature increases of up 8.6 degrees Fahrenheit.
The report is part of an ongoing series in which several United Nations-appointed scientific working groups provide a comprehensive analysis of available climate research and suggestions for actions that might be taken to mitigate the impacts of a warming climate.
Current Injunctions: The IPCC, which released the second part of the Fifth Assessment Report on Sunday, continued to emphasize the need for immediate response to climate change.
“We’re not in an era where climate change is some sort of future hypothetical,” Chris Field, a scientist at the Carnegie Institution and co-chair of Working Group II, told reporters in Yokohama, where the scientists convened. “There is no question that we live in a world that’s already altered by climate change.”
The latest report addresses the impact of climate change on everything from oceans and agriculture to human society and finds that human and natural systems are already suffering and will continue to suffer.
Changes in water quality and quantity, negative impacts on crop yields, a downturn in human health are among the effects to be expected if change isn’t forthcoming, according to a summary of the report for policymakers. The report also claims that non-climatic factors will be exacerbated by climate change in the coming years.
“Throughout the 21st century, climate-change impacts are projected to slow down economic growth, make poverty reduction more difficult, further erode food security, and prolong existing and create new poverty traps, the latter particularly in urban areas and emerging hot spots of hunger,” the report states.
Although the report is grim, it’s not all gloom and doom. The authors report that while a certain amount of climate impact is already locked in, adaptations, especially those that slow greenhouse gas emissions, can reduce future impacts and the need for even more costly adaptation.
Future Guidance: Sunday’s report is the second of four to be released by the IPCC. The Working Group III report, which will address mitigation measures, is expected later this month, while a synthesis Report will be delivered in late October 2014.
Government around the world are also preparing for a UN for a climate conference to be held in Paris in 2015. The Fifth Assessment Report will deeply inform those talks and there’s some hope the IPCC’s lack of word mincing will give the talks more teeth than those of the Durban and Warsaw talks that came before.
In the meantime, there is no need to ask for whom the climate change bell tolls, according to IPCC Chairperson Rajendra K. Pachauri. It tolls for all of us.
“In view of the impacts [presented in the report] and those that we have projected for the future, we know that nobody on the planet will be untouched by climate change.”