A new UN report will set out a stark message on the state of the climate crisis, raising pressure on governments meeting for the crucial Cop26 talks in the autumn.
The report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), due to be published on Monday (August 9) is the first part of a review of current scientific knowledge about how the world is warming due to human activity.
It is the first such global assessment since 2013, when scientists found that global warming was “unequivocal” and human influence on the climate was clear, with the majority of warming since the 1950s extremely likely to be down to human activity.
The message in the latest report is expected to be even stronger, with warnings of how soon global temperatures could rise 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, a limit that countries have pledged to try to avoid breaching because of the dangerous consequences for humanity.
Drawing on more than 14,000 scientific papers, the review is set to provide the latest knowledge on past and potential future warming, how humans are changing the climate and how that is increasing extreme weather events and driving sea-level rises.
A summary report is being published after being approved in a process involving scientists and representatives of 195 governments that has taken place online over the last two weeks.
That means governments have signed off on the findings – and pressure will be on them to take more action at global climate talks known as Cop26 which are being held in Glasgow in November.
Professor Piers Forster, from Leeds University, one of the scientists involved in the process, said: “This report will be able to say a whole lot more about the extremes we are experiencing today and it will be able to be categoric that our emissions of greenhouse gases are causing them and they are also going to get worse.”
He told LBC Radio: “The report will come with quite a lot of bad news about where we are and where we’re going, but there are going to be nuggets of optimism in there which I think are really good for the climate change negotiations.
“The first one is that, if we can really get our act together to cut our greenhouse gas emissions within the next 10-year timeframe and to get to these net-zero targets that everyone is talking about, there’s a good chance we can try and keep temperatures in the longer term below 1.5 degrees.”
The report is the first part of the sixth global assessment of climate science to be undertaken since the IPCC was formed in 1988.
It comes as global temperatures have climbed to 1.2C above pre-industrial levels and increasingly extreme weather hits countries around the world.
UN climate chief Patricia Espinosa has warned that many countries have not brought forward new action plans for cutting their emissions, a key part of what they need to do before the Cop26 climate summit, and those that have are not doing enough.
Cop26 President Alok Sharma
(Image: PA Wire/PA Images)
Over the weekend, Cop26 President Alok Sharma laid bare the enormous threat failing to curb emissions poses to humanity.
In an interview with the Guardian, he said: “You’re seeing on a daily basis what is happening across the world. Last year was the hottest on record, the last decade the hottest decade on record.
“I don’t think we’re out of time but I think we’re getting dangerously close to when we might be out of time.”
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