The Science Media Centre gathered expert reaction on the release of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Synthesis Report for the Sixth Assessment Cycle.
Professor Tim Naish, Professor in Earth Sciences, Victoria University of Wellington, comments:
“Another year, another report from the IPCC. This is the 4th and final report that summarises and synthesises the trilogy of the 6th Assessment Cycle. The message for urgent mitigation remains the same, while global emissions keep going up, and time runs out. There is a good chance global temperature will reach the 1.5C target before the next IPCC report comes out (the 7th Assessment Report is probably 7-9 years away). So, is there anything new in this latest report?
- The Science. “The science remains un-controvertible. The world is warming at an unprecedented rate and it’s because of us. At current rates we could be at 1.5C in 5-10 years and 2C in 15-20 years. The associated positive feedbacks in the climate system are already occurring and their impacts are being felt (sea-level rise, extreme events, wildfires, flooding, drought, heat waves). Moreover 1.5-2C global warming is an irreversible tipping point for the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, and intergenerational multi-metre sea-level rise will be unavoidable.”
- Adaptation. “We are woefully unprepared for those impacts, and at the very least must adapt to the climate change that is unavoidable and locked in. Two billion people in the Hindu Kush rely in ice fields and glaciers in the Himalayas for their freshwater. One billion people will be affected annual coastal flooding by the end of the century. Fifteen million Bangladesh people may be displaced as early as 2050. In New Zealand with 30cm of unavoidable sea-level rise, which will happen in many places by 2050, the historic 1-in-100-year coastal flood is likely to happen annually.”
- Mitigation. “Those who have contributed least to emissions are being disproportionately affected. This is especially the case for small island and developing states (SIDS). If the current rate of emissions continues unabated, achieving the Paris target will not be possible without overshoot. This may cross some tipping points. Yet this latest report while emphasising the urgency to reduce emissions still offers hope and some plausible pathways. However, it cautions that any measures to ameliorate climate change must now involve immediate adaptation to those impacts we can no longer avoid.”
“So, another year of hope and urgency is upon us, after the world’s governments sat on their hands at the latest COP, and another IPCC report will ‘likely’ largely be ignored.”