The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published the second part of its current status report today – and paints a pretty bleak picture. Accordingly, the consequences of climate change can already be felt everywhere and in some cases may already be irreversible. The current warming is already affecting the lives of billions of people worldwide and endangering the livelihoods of entire populations. The report shows that adaptation measures have already taken place or are at least planned, but these are too incomplete and distributed too unevenly.
The first part of the sixth World Climate Report (AR6), published in August 2021, made it clear that climate change is in full swing and is having measurable consequences everywhere. More specifically than ever before, the authors of the IPCC also quantified what CO2 budget humanity still has to meet the climate protection goals agreed at the climate summit in Paris and thus prevent serious consequences. The second part that has now been published focuses on exactly these consequences. In it, the more than 270 lead authors have compiled how strongly and how the warming that has already occurred is affecting the basis of human life, society and nature. At the same time, the authors also identified how 127 key risks will evolve as warming continues.
cascading consequences
“The scientific evidence is clear: climate change is a threat to human well-being and the health of the planet,” states IPCC Working Group II co-leader Hans-Otto Pörtner from the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research. “Any further delay in concerted global action will mean that we will miss the small and rapidly closing window of time to a still livable future.” Specifically, the IPCC report states that the current extent of climate change is already causing substantial and in some cases irreversible changes in the Earth’s terrestrial, marine and freshwater ecosystems. The increase in weather extremes such as droughts, heat waves or heavy rain and storm surges have already pushed these systems beyond the limits of their natural ability to adapt in many places.
This not only has far-reaching consequences for nature, but also for human livelihoods, according to the report. Because the supply of food through fishing, plant cultivation and animal husbandry is already affected by climate extremes and there are also demonstrable consequences for human health. According to the IPCC authors, on average every third person on earth is affected in some way by climate change. The world climate report also emphasizes that the consequences of climate change do not work in isolation, but are linked to one another through a variety of interactions and feedback loops. “As a result, climate impacts and climate risks are becoming increasingly complex and difficult to manage,” says the report. This results in cascading and compounding effects. “This report shows the interdependence of climate, biodiversity and people,” says IPCC Chair Hoesung Lee.
The consequences of global warming do not affect all regions to the same extent and in the same way. Many of the regions that are already among the poorer and disadvantaged are disproportionately affected by extreme weather, but also by rising sea levels. “Climate change is exacerbating inequality – the report makes that clearer than ever before,” comments Hermann Lotze-Campen from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). As a result, the number of climate refugees could continue to rise.
patchy adaptation
In the world climate report, the authors also take stock of the adaptation and climate protection measures that have been implemented so far. “There has already been progress in planning and implementing adaptation measures in all sectors and regions,” says the report. “But the process of adaptation is uneven and patchy.” Combating the impacts of climate change requires everyone working together – governments, the private sector and civil society, says Working Group II co-chair Debra Roberts. Above all, the financing has so far been geared too one-sidedly to measures against short-term risks instead of a fundamental transformation, and low-income regions and population groups have been neglected. “The report underscores the urgency of immediate and more ambitious action to address climate risks,” Lee said. “Half of the measures that were once possible are already no longer an option.”
The report also offers new insights into the risks associated with so-called overshoot paths: Even if the temperature rise only temporarily exceeds the 1.5 degree mark and then drops again, this would have serious and sometimes irreversible damage to ecosystems and ecosystems companies as a result. “These new findings are of very great importance for the climate protection debate, in which the opinion prevails too often that higher degrees of warming can be allowed for certain periods of time in the hope that sufficient technologies for better climate protection and negative emissions will be available in the future “, comments co-author Matthias Garschagen from the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich (LMU).
Source: IPCC AR6, WMO, Science Media Center