UN report delivers dire warning on climate change
By Administrator_ India
Extreme climate occurrences in the form of heatwaves, droughts, floods and thinning of glaciers are now indisputably linked to human behaviour and not natural causes, says the latest assessment report by global climate scientists, adding that some of these climate changes might be irreversible. The report, “Climate Change 2021”, from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change also says the recent climate extremes are unprecedented in thousands of years.
The IPCC, in its Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), estimates that under all growth scenarios, the planet’s warming level will touch 1.5 degrees Celsius. The report shows that emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) from human activities are responsible for approximately 1.1 degrees Celsius of warming since 1850-1900. Averaged over the next 20 years, global temperature is expected to reach or exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius above the normal range, it says. UN Secretary-General António Guterres described the report as “a code red for humanity.”
The Climate Change 2021 report has been prepared by Working Group-I of the three groups formed for preparing the AR6. This is the first installment of a report on a ‘physical science’ basis. The IPCC report comes ahead of the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) at Glasgow in November.
At the last climate conference in Paris in 2015, 195 countries had adopted the agreement to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius, and preferably below 1.5 degrees Celsius.
A global warming level of 1.5 degrees Celsius would mean increased and more intense heat waves, longer summers, and shorter winters. This, in turn, would impact the water cycle, and thereby the rains, glacier melting, and sea levels.
