UN climate change report says global warming is dangerously close to getting out of control

New Delhi: Global warming is dangerously close to getting out of control, a UN climate panel said in a landmark report on Monday, warning the world that there will be more climate disruptions in the coming centuries, if not decades. .

Humans are “obviously” guilty, Report of scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said. Quick action to cut greenhouse gas emissions may limit some of the impacts, but others are now closed.

Deadly heat waves, giant storms and other weather extremes that are already happening will only get more severe.

On Monday alone, 500,000 acres of wilderness were seen burning in California, while in Venice tourists waded through ankle-deep water in St. Mark’s Square.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the report as “code red for humanity”.

“The alarm bells are deafening,” he said in a statement. “This report should sound the death knell for coal and fossil fuels before they destroy our planet.”

The evidence is irrefutable: Greenhouse gas emissions are plaguing our planet and putting billions of people at risk.

Global warming is affecting every region on Earth, with many changes becoming irreversible.

We must act decisively now to avert a climate disaster. https://t.co/TQlgp1D9AV

— Antonio Guterres (@antonioguterres) August 9, 2021

In an interview with Reuters, activist Greta Thunberg called on the public and the media to put “overwhelming” pressure on governments to act.

In three months, the United Nations COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, will seek to curtail much more ambitious climate action from the world’s countries, and the funding to go with it.

Based on more than 14,000 scientific studies, the IPCC report gives the most comprehensive and detailed picture ever How climate change is changing the natural world – and what could happen next.

Unless immediate, rapid and large-scale action is taken to reduce emissions, the report says, average global temperatures are likely to reach or exceed the 1.5 °C (2.7 °F) warming threshold within 20 years. .

Pledges to cut emissions made so far are nowhere near enough to reduce the level of greenhouse gases – mostly carbon dioxide (CO2) that accumulates in the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels.

‘Wake-up call’

Governments and campaigners reacted with alarm to the findings.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he hoped the report would be “a wake-up call for the world to act now before we meet in Glasgow”.

US President Joe Biden tweeted on Monday: “We can’t wait to tackle the climate crisis. The signs are anecdotal. The science is undeniable. And the cost of inaction keeps rising.”

The report said emissions “disproportionately due to human activities” have already pushed the average global temperature by 1.1C above its pre-industrial average – and raised it by 0.5C without the tempering effects of pollution in the atmosphere. would have given.

This means that, as societies move away from fossil fuels, temperatures will rise again from the loss of airborne pollutants that come with them and currently reflect some of the Sun’s heat.

An increase of 1.5C is generally seen as the highest that humanity can face without widespread economic and social upheaval.

The previously recorded 1.1C warming is enough to set off the disastrous weather. This year, heat waves killed hundreds in the Pacific Northwest and broke records around the world. Wildfires triggered by heat and drought are sweeping cities across the US West, releasing record carbon dioxide emissions from Siberian forests, and prompting Greeks to flee their homes by ferry .

Further warming could mean that in some places people could die just from going outside.

“The more we move the climate system … the more obstacles we overcome that we can only project poorly,” said IPCC co-author Bob Kopp.

cannot be reversed

Some changes are already “locked in”. Greenland’s land-ice sheet is “virtually certain” to melt and raise sea levels, which will continue to rise as the oceans warm and expand for centuries to come.

“We are now committed to certain aspects of climate change, some of which are irreversible for hundreds to thousands of years,” said IPCC co-author Tamsin Edwards, a climate scientist at King’s College London. “But the more we limit warming, the more we can avoid or slow those changes.”

But even in slowing climate change, the report says, the world is running out of time.

If emissions are reduced over the next decade, average temperatures could be 1.5C by 2040 and possibly 1.6C by 2060, before stabilizing.

And if, instead, the world continues on its current trajectory, growth could be 2.0C by 2060 and 2.7C by the end of the century.

Earth hasn’t been as warm since the Pliocene epoch, about 3 million years ago – when the first ancestors of humanity appeared, and the oceans were 25 meters (82 feet) higher than they are today.

It could be even worse, if warming triggers a feedback loop that releases even more climate-warming carbon emissions – such as the melting of Arctic permafrost or the dying out of global forests.

Under these high-emissions scenarios, the Earth could boil at a temperature 4.4C above the pre-industrial average for the last two decades of this century.