In nine years, IPCC experts have established that global warming caused by human activity is happening faster and stronger than expected.
By LL with AFP
© WALTER DIAZ / AFP
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Lhe fruit of nine years of work. On Monday, UN climate experts gathered in Switzerland deliver the latest scientific consensus on global warming and on humanity’s urgent response to this existential challenge. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is to publish at 2 p.m. (1 p.m. GMT) the summary of its 6e evaluation report, summary of the more than 10,000 pages of work he has published since his previous summary at the end of 2014.
In nine years, the scientific community has established that global warming caused by human activity is occurring faster and stronger than expected. And highlighted the risk of reaching “tipping points”, synonymous with major irreversible impacts, even runaway.
After a week of meetings in Interlaken (Switzerland), the representatives of the member states of the IPCC approved on Sunday the “summary for decision-makers”, some thirty pages summarizing the state of science and the panorama of possible solutions, in a understandable by all. This highly political document had to be approved line by line by the delegates of the countries represented in all 195 Member States.
“We are approaching the point of no return, of exceeding the maximum warming threshold of 1.5 degrees,” UN chief Antonio Guterres recalled in a video message at the opening of the session on March 13. .
“Leaders need sound, candid, detailed scientific guidance to make the right decisions […] and accelerating the exit from fossil fuels and the reduction of emissions,” said Antonio Guterres.
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A global assessment expected at COP28
The “summary for decision-makers” will be a major point of support for civil society, which has its sights set on the meeting of COP28, in December in Dubai, where a first global assessment of the countries’ commitments to meet the objectives of Paris is expected.
Keeping warming to well below 2°C, and if possible 1.5°C, relative to pre-industrial times, as called for in the 2015 Paris Agreement, seems elusive without a rapid reduction in emissions greenhouse gases, starting with those related to oil, gas and coal.
The world is now at almost 1.2°C of warming and the multiplication of extreme events, predicted by the first work of the IPCC, is already occurring on all continents.
In 2022, the influence of climate change on the intensity and recurrence of extreme phenomena has been demonstrated for the devastating floods in Pakistan or Nigeria, the exceptional heat wave in Argentina and Chile or the associated heat waves and droughts in Europe and the United States, according to the scientific network World Weather Attribution.
In addition to the “summary for policymakers”, the final summary of this 6e report also includes a technical document of around 70 pages, constituting the summary of all the work: the three main sections published in 2021 and 2022 – on the physical evidence of warming, on its impacts, and finally on mitigation measures – and three special reports (on the consequences of a warming of +1.5°C, on the oceans and the cryosphere, and on the land surface).
