Climate change panel to present key global warming report for world leaders, UN reports

The United Nations-run Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and its representatives from the 195 member governments are preparing to release the Summary for Policymakers of a report on climate change at a press conference on 8 October. The full report is due to be published in time for this year’s climate conference, COP24, due to be held in Katowice, Poland in November.

The report is expected to showcase how quickly global warming has escalated, despite humanity’s efforts to fight it. It will analyse the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius and the potential implications of a world that is growing increasingly warm.

Many scientists now believe that without drastic, widespread change, that goal is unattainable. According to the IPCC report, with the current levels of greenhouse gas emissions, the IPCC finds with "high confidence" that we will zoom past the 1.5C marker around 2040.

Scientists around the world have weighed in on the consequences of a hotter world, and all of the damage that this type of climate change can do. Henri Waisman, a senior researcher at the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations, and a coordinating author of the report explains:

"Climate impacts are exponentially more dramatic when we go from 1.5C to 2C.”

What used to be once-a-century heatwaves in the northern hemisphere will become 50 percent more likely in many regions with an extra half-degree of warming. Tropical fish, coral reefs, and Arctic Sea ice are among other areas of the global community that will be seriously affected by the increasing temperatures.

Kaisa Kosonen, IPPC campaign lead for Greenpeace International, stresses the importance of the impending findings of this report:

"We're talking about the kind of crisis that forces us to rethink everything we've known so far on how to build a secure future. We have to try to make the impossible possible."

The AIDF Global Summit will return to Washington in 2019.

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Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech