- Countries will start negotiations on the United Nations climate change scientific report.
- The IPCC assessment was conducted during a series of extreme weather events.
- Scientists warn that global temperatures should be maintained at 1.5°C higher than pre-industrial levels.
Nearly 200 countries began online negotiations on Monday to validate a United Nations scientific report, which will host the autumn summit and be responsible for preventing climate disasters on a global scale.
In recent weeks, record heat waves, floods and droughts on three continents, all of which have been exacerbated by global warming, have made the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment very timely.
“This will be a wake-up call, no doubt,” said Richard Black, the founder and senior assistant of the London Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit.
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He pointed out that this report was released a few weeks before the UN General Assembly, the G20 summit and the COP26 climate summit held in Glasgow by 197 countries. Since the IPCC last comprehensive assessment of global heating in 2014, the world has changed. And the future.
Lingering doubts
The suspicion that warming is accelerating or almost entirely of human origin, and the false and reassuring notion that climate influences are tomorrow’s problems have disappeared in the haze of fatal heat waves and fires.
Another milestone since the last issue of the IPCC: The Paris Agreement has been passed, a collective commitment to control the earth’s surface temperature rise to a range of 2°C “far below” the level of the late 19th century.
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), so far, the burning of fossil fuels, methane leaks, and carbon pollution from agriculture have raised the thermometer by 1.1°C. After a brief episode caused by Covid, emissions have risen sharply again.
The 2015 treaty also set an ideal limit of 1.5°C, and many contracting parties undoubtedly believe that this goal can be safely ignored.
However, a special report from the IPCC in 2018 showed that a temperature increase of 2°C will be destructive to humans and the planet. “1.5 degrees Celsius has become a de facto target”-this also proves the influence of the IPCC in formulating global policies. The head of the IPCC stated that the author and Maynooth University professor Peter Thorne.
Scientists have calculated that greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced by 50% by 2030 and completely phased out by 2050 in order to stay within 1.5°C.
The third great change in the past seven years has been science itself.
“Today, we have better climate prediction models, as well as clearer climate change signals for longer observations,” said climatologist Robert Votal, who is also the lead author of the IPCC and French Pierre-Simonra Director of the Plath Institute.
It can be said that the biggest breakthrough is the so-called attribution research, which for the first time allows scientists to quickly quantify the extent to which climate change has increased the intensity or likelihood of extreme weather events.
Low ball danger
For example, within a few days of the deadly “hot dome” that scorched Canada and the western United States last month, the World Weather Attribution Consortium calculated that heat waves would be almost impossible without artificial warming.
But post-mortem analysis is not the same as foresight. The IPCC-established in 1988 to provide information for the UN climate negotiations-has been criticized by some because it underestimates the danger. Harvard science historian Naomi Oreskes calls this model For “make mistakes in the least dramatic aspect.”
Beginning Monday, representatives from 195 countries will work with the chief scientist to review the 20 to 30 page “Summary for Policymakers” word by word.
The virtual meeting of the first part of the three-part report-covering the physical sciences-will take two weeks instead of the usual time. The document is scheduled to be released on August 9.
The second part of the report will be released in February 2022, covering the impact.
A leaked draft obtained by Agence France-Presse warned that even if the carbon pollution of climate warming is brought under control, climate change will fundamentally reshape life on earth in the next few decades, and called for “transformation and change” so as not to Future generations face a worse situation.
The third part will be announced next month to study solutions to reduce emissions.
The report under review this week is almost entirely based on published research, and even under optimistic circumstances, a temporary “overshoot” of the 1.5°C target may be predicted.
It will also focus on so-called “low probability, high risk” events, such as the irreversible melting of ice sheets that may raise sea levels by several meters, and the rot of permafrost filled with greenhouse gases.
“The feedback to amplify changes is stronger than we thought, and we may be approaching a tipping point,” said Tim Renton, director of the Institute of Global Systems at the University of Exeter.
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