Climate Change Report by United Nations: Current Affairs Special Series

Team Adda247 and BankersAdda are here with a Current Affairs Special Series. In this series, candidates will be introduced to current affairs topics daily, which will not only improve their general awareness but also will ensure that the candidates do not lack in any current affairs topic. Today’s Current Affairs topic is Climate Change Report by United Nations.

Climate Change Report by United Nations

The United Nation released its 6th assessment report on ‘Climate Change. The report has released by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in which India is one of its members. 

The landmark study is an alarm of increasing extreme heat waves, droughts, and flooding and a key temperature limit is being broken in just over a decade (10 years). Mr.Antonio Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General has named this IPCC’s assessment as the most detailed review of climate science ever conducted. The report is a ‘code red for humanity’ said by the UN Chief. 

UN Chief Mr. Guterres also bade on world leaders to see the upcoming COP26 climate summit in November for gathering up finance to countries already dealing with the fallout from global heating and emissions cuts. 

About the IPCC report:

The report is considered the first major review of the science of climate change since 2013. This assessment for our planet’s future has been taken by the UN’s IPCC which is a group of scientists whose findings are endorsed by the world’s governments. 

Here are some bullet points of the IPCC report:

• Global surface temperature is 1.09C higher than 1850-1900 in 2011-2020.
• The level of the sea has been rising around three times compared to 1901-1971.
• Human influence is “very likely” the main driver of the global retreat of glaciers since the 1990s and the decrease in Arctic sea ice. 
• It has been seen “virtually certain” that hot extremes including heatwaves have become more frequent and more intense since the 1950s, while cold events have become less frequent and less severe. 
• Earth feels the past five years have been the hottest on record since 1850. 

The new report indicates clearly that the warming we have experienced to date has made changes to many of our planetary support systems that are irreversible on timescales of centuries to millennia. The oceans are continuing to warm and would become more acidic. Mountain and polar glaciers will keep melting for decades or centuries. 

Most of the nations have accepted the goals of the Paris climate agreement in 2015. This agreement has a target to keep the rise in global temperatures well below 2C this century and to pursue efforts to keep it under 1.5C. But according to this report, it seems that all the emissions assumptions which were assumed by the scientist both targets might be broken. 

What should we do?

This report is crystal clear indications about the downsides to warming, thus scientists are more optimistic that if we can cut global emissions in half by 2030 and reach net zero by the middle of this century and even we can halt and possibly (hopefully) reverse the situation of rising temperatures. 

Reaching net-zero requires reducing greenhouse gas emissions by using clean technology, then forgetting any remaining releases using carbon capture and storage or absorbing them by planting trees.