The IPCC released their latest Assessment Report (AR6) on March 20th, summarising the current state of knowledge surrounding climate change impacts, mitigation and risks. We’ve analysed the report and outlined the key findings.
1) Global temperature changes are human-caused
The report states “it is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land… Human-caused climate change is already affecting many weather and climate extremes in every region across the globe. This has led to widespread adverse impacts and related losses and damages to nature and people.”
Global surface temperature between 2011-2020 was 1.09C higher than 1850-1900. If you focus only on increases over land, the temperatures have risen by an average of 1.34C-1.83C across the world. Of these global temperature changes, it is likely that human-causes have attributed to 0.8C-1.3C with a best estimate of 1.07C.
These human-caused global temperature rises have led to “unprecedented changes” in the Earth’s climate, with each 0.5C of warming causing discernible increases in the occurrence and severity of heat extremes, heavy rain, tropical storms and droughts.
2) Climate change is affecting the global population
It is estimated that 3.3-3.6 billion people live in areas that are “highly vulnerable” to climate change. As a direct result of extreme weather patterns across the globe, millions of people are now exposed to acute food and water security. Currently, roughly half the world’s population experiences severe water scarcity for at least one month per year.
The communities most vulnerable to climate change consequences are located in Africa, Asia, Centra and South America. Small islands, the Arctic and developing economies are also extremely vulnerable to climate change impacts.
3) The 1.5C limit won’t avoid climate disaster
Continued greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions will exacerbate warming further, with every increment of warming intensifying prevalent hazards. At a rate of 1.5C warming, 950 million people across the world’s drylands can expect to experience water and heat stress and desertification, with 24 per cent of the global population being exposed to flooding.
A more concerning observation is that surpassing 1.5C will lead to sever and irreversible impacts, such as species extinction and loss of human life. The report states that “in the near term, warming is more likely than not to reach 1.5C even under the very low GHG emission scenario and likely or very likely to exceed 1.5C under higher emissions scenarios.”
