The IPCC's Sixth Assessment Report is arriving, and it won't paint a pretty picture of the global climate!
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Latest IPCC report 2021 on Global Climate
- The story: In August, hundreds of scientists globally finalized a report that assessed the state of the global climate. The report is used by governments and industries everywhere to understand the threats ahead. 234 scientists read 14,000+ research papers to write the report.
- Details: This report is first of four that make up the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report.
- The IPCC: It is the "Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change". It’s the United Nations’ climate-science-focused organization, since 1988, and it has 195 member countries.
- Every seven years or so, the IPCC releases a report – essentially a “state of the climate” – summarizing the most up-to-date, peer-reviewed research on the science of climate change, its effects and ways to adapt to and mitigate it.
- The purpose is to provide the information governments (and others) need to make important decisions regarding climate change. The IPCC provides a summary of thousands of papers published regarding the science, risks, and social and economic components of climate change.
- Two important aspects: First, the IPCC reports are nonpartisan. Every IPCC country can nominate scientists to participate in the report-writing process, and there is an intense and transparent review process. The IPCC doesn’t tell governments what to do. Its goal is to provide the latest knowledge on climate change, its future risks and options for reducing the rate of warming.
- From 2013 to 2021: The last big IPCC assessment was released in 2013, and the world has completely tranformed now.
- Computer speed and climate modeling has greatly improved, and each year scientists understand more and about Earth’s climate system and the ways specific regions and people around the globe are changing and vulnerable to climate change.
- The IPCC doesn’t conduct its own climate-science research. Instead, it summarizes everyone else’s. The upcoming report was authored by 234 scientists nominated by IPCC member governments around the world. These scientists are leading Earth and climate science experts.
- This report – the first of four that make up the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report – will look at the physical science behind climate change and its impacts. These scientists volunteered to read those 14,000-plus papers.
- RCPs, SSPs: To get a glimpse of the future, scientists run experiments using computer models that simulate Earth’s climate. With these models, scientists can ask: If the globe heats up by a specific amount, what might happen in terms of sea-level rise, droughts and the ice sheets? What if the globe heats up by less than that – or more? What are the outcomes then?
- All climate models work a little differently and create different results. But if 20 different climate models are run using the same assumptions about the amount of warming and produce similar results, people can be fairly confident in the results.
- RCPs are the "representative concentration pathways", and SSPs the "shared socioeconomic pathways". These are the standardized scenarios that climate modelers use.
- Four RCPs were the focus of the future-looking climate modeling studies incorporated into the 2013 report. They ranged from RCP 2.6, where there is a drastic reduction in global fossil fuel emissions and the world only heats up a little, to RCP 8.5, a world in which fossil fuel emissions are unfettered and the world heats up a lot.
- The IPCC’s Fifth Climate Assessment, in 2013, focused on representative concentration pathways, or RCPs. This time around, climate modelers are using SSPs. Unlike the RCPs, which focus solely on greenhouse gas emissions trajectories, the SSPs consider socioeconomic factors and are concerned with how difficult it will be to adapt to or mitigate climate change, which in turn affects greenhouse gas emissions.
- The five SSPs differ in what the world might look like in terms of global demographics, equity, education, access to health, consumption, diet, fossil fuel use and geopolitics.
- The year 2021: So far, 2021 has brought deadly extreme weather events around the globe, from extensive wildfires to extreme heat, excessive rainfall and flash flooding. Events like these become more common in a warming world. No one expects an optimistic picture to emerge from the upcoming report. Climate change is a threat-multiplier that compounds other global, national and regional environmental and social issues.
- Summary: The report can help everyone - individuals can take steps to reduce their emissions, including driving less, using energy-efficient lightbulbs and rethinking their food choices. Twenty fossil fuel companies are responsible for about one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions. That requires governments taking action now!
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