It is more than likely that the Earth will warm 1.5 ° C in the next 20 years, a decade earlier than scientists had predicted, so heat waves, floods and droughts will become more frequent and intense, according to a United Nations report called a “red code for humanity”.
The world’s largest report on climate change also said it is “unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, oceans and land.”
The worsening is guaranteed
Since 1970, global surface temperatures have risen faster than in any other 50-year period over the past 2,000 years , while the past five years have been the hottest on record since 1850.
1.5 ºC is considered to be the point where climate change becomes much more dangerous. Hence, the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change committed countries to limiting warming to 1.5 ° C, but it has already increased by 1.2 ° C.
“The alarm bells are deafening and the evidence is irrefutable: greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation are suffocating our planet and putting billions of people at immediate risk,” says the Secretary General of the UN, António Guterres.
Given this situation, we will not be able to rule out all these consequences: a rise in sea level approaching 2 meters by the end of this century, nor that the Arctic is ‘practically free of sea ice’ in September at least once before 2050 or that heat waves “have become more frequent and intense in most regions of the world.” Sea level rise will be an irreversible change for hundreds or perhaps thousands of years, the UN report asserts.
The report of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was prepared by 200 scientists from 60 countries.
