Climate change report reads ‘code red for humanity’: UN

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In what is termed as a “wake-up call”, the UN panel on climate change has said that global warming is pretty close to spiralling out of control and further climate disruptions are certain.

Global warming

“The planet will warm by 1.5°C in all scenarios. In the most ambitious emissions pathway, we reach 1.5°C in the 2030s, overshoot to 1.6°C, with temperatures dropping back down to 1.4°C at the end of the century,” said the report by UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The report said that it is “unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land”.

Scientists consider 1.5 degrees Celsius as a climatic guardrail, adding that breach of this could lead to frequent storms, rainfall, floods, and drought causing unprecedented human misery and economic loss.

Code red for humanity

Stating that “alarm bells are deafening, and the evidence is irrefutable”, UN secretary-general António Guterres said findings are a “code red for humanity”

“It has been clear for decades that the Earth’s climate is changing, and the role of human influence on the climate system is undisputed,” Valérie Masson-Delmotte, co-chair of the IPCC’s Working Group I, said in a statement.

Climate change is intensifying and is happening at a fast pace, affecting all regions of the planet, it added.

Ko Barrett, the IPCC’s vice-chair and a senior climate adviser at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told media, that the future will be hotter than it is now.

“It can be kind of demoralising or depressing to think that there are so many things that are kind of irreversible for a long period of time,” Barrett said, adding that the irreversible changes can be slowed down with rapid, strong, and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

The report stated that greenhouse gas emissions from human activities have caused global warming at a rate not seen in at least the past 2,000 years. It’s estimated that human-caused climate change is responsible for approximately 1.1 degrees Celsius of warming since 1850-1900, the earliest period with reliable measurements of global surface temperatures, according to the report.