IPCC climate change report 2021: The key points

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on Monday released its new report on climate change effects. The report highlights the dire need for private and public corporations to bring down carbon emissions to zero and the augmenting pace of temperature rise. 

The report, approved by 195 member governments of the IPCC, including India, projected that climate changes will be seen in all regions in the coming decades. The extreme weather events will be seen at new locations, during different timing, in new combinations i.e. two or more extreme events occurring together.

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Here are the key takeaways from the report.

Increased CO2 will have long term impacts

One of the core points of the report is the increased carbon emission level and its grave long-term implications on the environment.

The report estimates that the planet will warm rapidly as the carbon outtake has been doubled. This doubling of CO2 in the air to between 2.6-4.5C has caused an increase in global average temperature.

Temperature is rising faster than anticipated

Environmentalists and world leaders have earlier predicted that the temperature of Earth will keep on rising due to global warming and the greenhouse effect. However, the IPCC report suggests that it is happening faster than we thought.

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The IPCC report says when scientists expect to reach 1.5C to the mid-2030s. Severe heat waves that happened only once every 50 years are now happening roughly once a decade

Cutting carbon emissions won’t work

The report suggests that even if carbon emissions are cut by nations, global warming is likely to exceed the threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2040, that is it will exceed the 2015 Paris goal.

Arctic summer will no longer be icy

According to an IPCC report, summertime sea ice atop the Arctic Ocean will vanish entirely at least once by 2050. Even this is under the most optimistic scenario.

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

Humans to be blamed

The IPCC report in the strongest terms possible said that these daunting climate change effects are an outcome of human-related activities.

The first line of the IPCC report summary reads, “It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land.”

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Sea level is bound to rise

The IPCC report says that the sea levels are sure to keep rising for hundreds or thousands of years. This will happen even if global warming were halted at 1.5C, the average sea level would still rise about 2 to 3 meters (6 to 10 feet), and maybe more.

Every area of the planet is already affected

According to the IPCC report, no region of the earth is escaped by the grave implications of human-induced climate changes.