New report warns climate change is harder and faster than predicted

In yet another blaring call scientists have reported in their latest report on climate change that over the last several years all signs including sea-level rise, planetary warming, shrinking ice sheets and carbon pollution have accelerated.

The report comes a world leaders converge on New York for the Climate Action Summit.

Titled United in Science, the report has been compiled by the UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and sheds light on the state of the climate and presents trends in the emissions and atmospheric concentrations of the main greenhouse gases.

Accelerating climate impacts from melting ice caps to sea-level rise and extreme weather were to blame for the record as the global average temperature increased by 1.1°C above pre-industrial (1850-1900) times and 0.2°C warmer than 2011-2015, authors of the report say.

But the international community is also divided. Under President Donald Trump, the Untied States ha pulled out of the 2015 Paris Agreement in a setback to efforts to control climate change. 

The report highlights the urgency for fundamental socioeconomic transformations and carbon-curbing actions to prevent further rise in global temperature with potentially irreversible impacts.

Climate change activists have been building a momentum for rescue action with the last week’s global ‘climate strike,’ drawing millions of students across the world, asking politicians and big corporations to reverse the impacts of what UN Secretary-General António Guterres has called a “climate emergency.”

According to the United Nations, Swedish teen activist Greta Thundberg told hundreds of young people gathered at UN Headquarters on Saturday for the first-ever Youth Climate Summit that “young people are unstoppable.”

Secretary General Guterres told the young activists that he feared “there is a serious conflict between people and nature, between people and the planet.”

There is no time to lose, with so many people around the world already suffering from the impacts of climate change, the UN chief said, telling the world leaders “don’t come to the Summit with beautiful speeches … come with concrete plans,” including carbon neutrality plans for 2050, options to tackle fossil fuel subsidies, taxing carbon and a possible end to new coal power sources after next year.

The latest report shows that the average global temperature for 2015–2019 is on track to be the warmest of any equivalent period on record. It is currently estimated to be 1.1°Celsius (± 0.1°C) above pre-industrial (1850–1900) times.

The UN says widespread and long-lasting heatwaves, record-breaking fires and other devastating events such as tropical cyclones, floods and drought have had major impacts on socioeconomic development and the environment.

According to the UN, as climate change intensifies, cities are particularly vulnerable to impacts such as heat stress and can play a key role in reducing emissions locally and globally.

With this backdrop to the Summit, meeting the targets set under the 2015 Paris Agreement requires immediate and all-inclusive action encompassing deep decarbonization complemented by ambitious policy measures, protection and enhancement of carbon sinks and biodiversity, and effort to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, the world body said on its news site.

 “Strategies for mitigation and for upscaling adaptive risk management are necessary going forward. Neither is adequate in isolation given the pace of climate change and magnitude of its impacts,” says the report, which warns that to stop a global temperature increase of more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the level of ambition needs to be tripled.

The scientists say that “only immediate and all-inclusive action encompassing: deep de-carbonization complemented by ambitious policy measures, protection and enhancement of carbon sinks and biodiversity, and efforts to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, will enable us to meet the Paris Agreement.”