The second of the three reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change regarding the impact of environmental damage on humanity may just be the most alarming one yet, as it presents the impact constantly rising global temperatures will have on life on Earth.
Slated for publication on Monday, February 28th, the new IPCC report is part of the panel’s sixth global assessment and follows a report released before November’s COP26 summit. A third report will be released later this year.
For this round of reviews, the IPCC focused on how climate change is affecting life on a regional level and in major cities and coastal communities.
The report will also underscore the point that dealing with climate change isn’t just about the drastic reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and aiming for net-zero carbon targets, but also the need to deal with immediate or short-term environmental threats.
According to Mark Watts, executive director of the 100-city-strong C40 network, these issues include the environmental impact of a massive influx of migrants or the overarching effect that widespread flooding and wildfires have on nations.
Many cities in several countries do not have climate program funds. However, they are not using them to make adaptive changes for dealing with climate change. Instead, they are being used to push poorer countries with low emission levels to drop their emissions even lower. Watts believes such funds would be better put to use in adapting to climate change in certain areas.
The new IPCC study also presents several milestones that are likely to occur as temperatures continue to rise, including irreversible changes like the shattering of Greenland’s ice sheet.
The broad-spectrum document also features several recent technological innovations developed to help countries adapt to the challenges posed by climate change. However, it has been noted that the study does not consider either carbon dioxide reduction or solar radiation management as viable solutions to the issue.
The IPCC climate reports result from institutional reviews of recent findings regarding global warming and climate change. These reviews are conducted every six or seven years, usually at the behest of individual governments, are typically conducted by researchers divided into three working groups. Each of these reviews considers the science behind the findings, along with the scale of environmental impact and proposed solutions to the issue.
