Tipping point
A new report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been hailed as a “how-to guide to defuse the climate time bomb” and a “final warning” for keeping warming below 1.5°C, a milestone at which damage to the climate is said to be irreversible.
The report — a synthesis of 10,000+ pages of research from hundreds of the world’s top scientists — doesn't make for light or easy reading, but its conclusion is clearer than ever: policymakers must act now.
Regular extremities
The report is the 4th and final instalment of the AR6 series. The first 3 covered the physical science of global warming, while the synthesis report pulls the findings together, with an emphasis on what can be done, and what the future might hold.
According to the report, the planet has already warmed 1.1°C since humans began burning fossil fuels, which has resulted in extreme weather events becoming more intense and more frequent.
While extreme weather phenomena such as heavy precipitation, droughts and extreme temperatures have all been noted since the 1800s, the prevalence of such events changes dramatically as the Earth warms. At the current level of warming, for example, extreme precipitation events are ~1.3x as likely than if humans hadn’t influenced the climate, droughts in agricultural and ecological regions are estimated to be ~1.7x more common, and extreme high temperatures are ~2.8x more likely too.
And that’s just where we sit currently. If, as the IPCC’s report suggests, we cross the 1.5°C mark within the next decade, these events will unfortunately become much more commonplace.
