Too Hot to Handle: The 2021 IPCC Report
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the United Nations’ body for assessing the science related to climate change. This expert body has become one of the main authorities in climate action, providing policymakers with regular scientific assessments on climate change, its implications, potential future risks, as well as adaptation and mitigation options. Every couple of years, these selected scientists from 195 governments prepare a lengthy climate report that outlines the status quo of the environment and potential steps to be taken to avoid a catastrophe.
A part of the 6th assessment report (chapters on human impacts and mitigation are to be delivered later in 2022) came out just days ago and it has caused a lot of attention. Largely because otherwise diplomatic IPCC seems to be for the first time speaking a language of urgency — the global warming is unequivocal.
I mean…Didn’t we kind of know that already? Well, yes and no — for those who have been following climate issues for some time, this is nothing new under the (very hot) sun. Media and politicians have spoken about the human-caused climate change at great length, but when the IPCC, an expert body of an international magnitude says that climate change is definitely happening due to us people, trust me, it is big news.
Even though the full report has close to 4000 pages, and without some background in climatology this might be a painful read, let’s look at the main implications based on the Summary for Policy Makers. It is also important to mention, that the IPCC does not carry out its own research but provides a summary of all available scientific literature related to climate change.
No if’s anymore
The point really is the switch in the language — however trivial this might sound, when scientists with the best information available claim that the human-caused climate change is real, it strikes a large difference to previously cautious wording. In the past reports, the IPCC would assure to use a considerate language such as ‘medium’ or ‘high confidence’, virtually leaving a lot of claims open for interpretation.
The real magic is in this sentence: “Observed increases in well-mixed greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations since around 1750 are unequivocally caused by human activities.” Yup, fellow humans, we have been busted by the world’s best climate scientists. It is now loud and clear that the magnificent increases since the start of the industrial era have been caused by human activity. The IPCC further explains that “each of the last four decades has been successively warmer than any decade that preceded it since 1850,” and that the human influence has warmed the climate at a rate that is unprecedented in at least in the last 2000 years.
The GHG emissions, one of the main drivers of climate change, have caused changes in several parts of the earth’s atmosphere, with land and ocean having taken up a near-constant proportion (about 56% per year) of CO2 emissions causing a global retreat of glaciers, a decrease in Arctic Sea ice area, ongoing global acidification and the sea level increases since at least 1971. Overall, the scale of recent changes across the climate system as a whole is unprecedented over many centuries to many thousands of years, according to the report.
It is virtually certain that hot extremes have become more frequent and more intense, while cold extremes become less frequent and less severe, with high confidence that human-induced climate change is the main driver of these changes. Even marine heatwaves have approximately doubled in frequency since the 1980s.
What is even more striking is that these changes are compound — changes in the climate system become larger in direct relation to increasing global warming, e.g., additional warming is projected to further amplify permafrost thawing, and loss of seasonal snow cover, of land ice and of Arctic Sea. So, one climate event can have a triggering effect for further changes in the climate.
The IPCC also shows 5 different scenarios of what is going to happen to our blue planet if it continues heating up by a certain degree — there are two relatively optimistic scenarios (SSP1–1.9 and SSP1–2.6), a middle-of-the-road one (SSP2–4.5), a dark future (SSP3–7.0), and a strange one (SSP5–8.5). Let me tell you this — the outlooks are dire with the latter ones. As a matter of fact, we are already close to 1.5C of warming and we will most likely reach it by mid-century. If this still doesn’t convince you, visit a unique IPCC website, which shows projections in every part of the planet, so you can check out what will for example happen to your favourite beach resort in like 30 years…I know, not nice! The report even says that every little fraction in the temperature might mean a big difference — so 1.5C is quite different from 1.6C — thus, when it comes to mitigation, every little count.
Light at the end of a tunnel?
According to an ancient saying, when you don’t have much to say, let the facts speak. Okay, maybe it is not an old saying, but still very much works in this case. There are two ways to look at the recent report — the negative one, saying that we are doomed, and an immense effort will have to be taken to make our lives at least bearable. Although the second part of the sentence is still true even in a more positive outlook, the IPCC report also brings some hope — it claims that the deliberate removal of CO2 from the atmosphere could reverse … some aspects of climate change. However, this will only happen … if deliberate removals are larger than emissions. In other words, just as Bill Gates claims in his recent book “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster”, the key is to achieve net-zero — so the amount of CO2 removed from the atmosphere must be bigger than what is emitted.
Therefore, it means we now DEFINITELY know what is happening and we even might know how to deal with it. Seeing IPCC articulating these claims can create great leverage for governments to step up their games and come forward with more ambitious plans. Although the part of the report covering adaption and mitigation is only coming out in 2022, we cannot just simply wait for it. It is best to get involved as soon as possible because just like in the Netflix show quoted above, when things get too hot, we will all get punished.
