Humans are drastically altering Earth’s climate, according to research. Climate change’s consequences can now be detected all over the world, and they’re getting worse fast, according to a new report released on August 9 by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC. And the time to undo some of these effects is running out.
According to Kim Cobb, a climate scientist at Georgia Tech in Atlanta and an author on the report’s opening chapter, “there is no place for question any longer” concerning humans’ culpability for current climate change. “And now we can declare with certainty that a whole class of extreme [events]” is linked to climate change caused by humans.
Climate change is already having an impact on every region of the globe, from drought and wildfires in the West to heat waves in Europe and flooding in Asia, according to the research (SN: 7/7/21). Since preindustrial times, each of the last four decades has been the warmest on record (SN: 5/26/21).
The study also considers a variety of greenhouse gas warming scenarios, including one of the most optimistic, in which the world achieves “net zero” carbon emissions by 2050, with emitted gases balanced by carbon removal from the atmosphere.