The Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) delivered a dire assessment and warning in its latest report released on Monday (April 4), revealing what UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said was “a litany of broken climate promises” by governments and corporations. “It is a file of shame, cataloguing the empty pledges that put us firmly on track towards an unlivable world,” Guterres said.
The climate change panel
The IPCC is the United Nations body for assessing the science related to climate change. The IPCC was set up in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). Its main activity is to prepare Assessment Reports, special reports, and methodology reports assessing the state of knowledge of climate change. However, the IPCC does not itself engage in scientific research. Instead, it asks scientists from around the world to go through all the relevant scientific literature related to climate change and draw up the logical conclusions.
Assessment Reports
The IPCC’s Assessment Reports (ARs), which are produced every few years, are the most comprehensive and widely accepted scientific evaluations of the state of the Earth’s climate. They form the basis for government policies to tackle climate change, and provide the scientific foundation for the international climate change negotiations.
Six Assessment Reports have been published so far, the sixth report (AR6) coming in three parts — the first in August 2021, the second in February 2022, and the third on Monday.
The first part of AR6 flagged more intense and frequent heat-waves, increased incidents of extreme rainfall, a dangerous rise in sea-levels, prolonged droughts, and melting glaciers — and said that 1.5 degrees Celsius warming was much closer than was thought earlier, and also inevitable.
The second part warned that multiple climate change-induced disasters were likely in the next two decades even if strong action was taken to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases.
What previous reports have said
* The first Assessment Report (1990) noted that emissions resulting from human activities are substantially increasing the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. Global temperatures have risen by 0.3 to 0.6 degree Celsius in the last 100 years. In the business-as-usual scenario, temperatures were likely to increase by 2 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels by 2025, and 4 degrees Celsius by 2100. Sea levels were likely to rise by 65 cm by 2100.
This report formed the basis for the negotiation of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 1992, known as the Rio Summit.
* The second Assessment Report (1995) revised the projected rise in global temperatures to 3 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by 2100, and sea-level rise to 50 cm, in light of more evidence. Global rise in temperature by 0.3 to 0.6 degree Celsius since the late 19th century was “unlikely to be entirely natural in origin”, it said.
AR2 was the scientific underpinning for the Kyoto Protocol of 1997. * The third Assessment Report (2001) revised the projected rise in global temperatures to 1.4 to 5.8 degrees Celsius by 2100 compared to 1990. The projected rate of warming was unprecedented in the last 10,000 years, it said. The report predicted increased rainfall on average, and that by 2100, sea levels were likely to rise by as much as 80 cm from 1990 levels.
Glaciers would retreat during the 21st century, and the frequency, intensity, and duration of extreme weather events would increase, it said. The report presented new and stronger evidence to show global warming was mostly attributable to human activities.
* The fourth Assessment Report (2007) said greenhouse gas emissions increased by 70 per cent between 1970 and 2004, and atmospheric concentrations of CO2 in 2005 (379 ppm) were the most in 650,000 years. In the worst-case scenario, global temperatures could rise 4.5 degrees Celsius by 2100 from pre-industrial levels, and sea levels could be 60 cm higher than 1990 levels.
The report won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for IPCC. It was the scientific input for the 2009 Copenhagen climate meeting.
* The fifth Assessment Report (2014) said more than half the temperature rise since 1950 was attributable to human activities, and that the atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrThe rise in global temperatures by 2100 could be as high as 4.8 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial times, and more frequent and longer heat waves were “virtually certain”. A “large fraction of species” faced extinction, and food security would be undermined, it said.
AR5 formed the scientific basis for negotiations of the Paris Agreement in 2015.ous oxide were “unprecedented” in the last 800,000 years.
Written by Amitabh Sinha
Source: Indian Express, 5/04/22
