Doomsday UN report says global warming is ALREADY causing extreme weather

Doomsday UN report says global warming is ALREADY causing extreme weather and the world will heat up by 1.5C by 2040 – a decade earlier than forecast

The Earth is likely to warm by 1.5C within the next 20 years — a decade earlier than previously expected — and heatwaves, flooding and droughts will become more frequent and intense, a bombshell United Nations report dubbed a ‘code red for humanity’ has warned.

Scientists had expected temperatures to rise by 1.5C above pre-industrial levels between 2030 and 2052 but now believe it will happen between this year and 2040.

The world’s largest ever report into climate change also said it was ‘unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, oceans and land’.

Since 1970, global surface temperatures have risen faster than in any other 50-year period over the past 2,000 years, the authors said, while the past five years have been the hottest on record since 1850.

‘It’s just guaranteed that it’s going to get worse,’ said report co-author Linda Mearns, a senior climate scientist at the US National Center for Atmospheric Research. ‘I don’t see any area that is safe… Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.’

It comes as record heatwaves, wildfires and floods hit countries around the world.

Last month western Europe saw its worst flooding in decades, leaving more than 180 people dead after heavy rainfall hit Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland and the Netherlands.

A blistering heatwave killed hundreds of people across the west coast of the US and Canada earlier this summer, while more than 300 died and almost 13 million others were affected by floods that engulfed Henan province in China at the end of July.

The 1.5C mark is considered to be the point where climate change becomes increasingly dangerous. The 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change committed countries to limiting warming to 1.5C but they have already risen by 1.2C.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres called the new report a ‘code red for humanity’. He warned: ‘The alarm bells are deafening, and the evidence is irrefutable: greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel burning and deforestation are choking our planet and putting billions of people at immediate risk.’

However, some experts say there is still hope that cuts in emissions of greenhouse gases could stabilise rising temperatures.

Humans are ‘unequivocally’ to blame

UN scientists said humanity’s damaging impact on the climate was a ‘statement of fact’, adding that it is ‘unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, oceans and land’.

Humans are very likely the main driver of the global retreat of glaciers, decline in sea ice, warming oceans and rising sea levels, the report said.

It also found that human activity is already responsible for 1.1C of global warming since 1850, while temperatures will continue to increase until at least the middle of this century.

Scientists said the world will reach or exceed 1.5C of warming over the next 20 years.

Weather will become more extreme

Human-caused climate change is already affecting many weather and climate extremes in every region around the world, the landmark report said, with stronger evidence of more frequent or intense heatwaves, heavy rain, droughts and tropical cyclones and the role humans play in driving the changes.

Heatwaves, flooding and droughts will only become more frequent and intense, the UN scientists warned.

Severe heatwaves that happened only once every 50 years are now happening roughly once a decade, while most land areas are seeing more rain or snowfall in a year and severe droughts are happening 1.7 times as often.

Arctic summers may soon be free of ice

The Arctic is likely to be ‘practically sea ice-free’ in September at least once before 2050, according to the IPCC’s most optimistic scenario.

The region is the fastest-warming area of the globe — at least twice as fast as the global average.

Sea level rises are ‘irreversible’

Scientists warned that a rise in sea levels approaching 2 metres by the end of this century ‘cannot be ruled out’, adding that these changes would be ‘irreversible’ for hundreds to thousands of years.

Warming in the polar regions is not only melting sea ice but also causing thermal expansion, where the water expands as sea temperatures rise. Both of these phenomena are factors in rising sea levels.

Source:- Daily Mail