The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis by the Working Group I was released. It addresses the most up-to-date physical understanding of the climate system, climate science, etc.
- United Nations(UN) secretary-general Antonio Guterres called the report ‘a code red for humanity’.
- The report states that if the emissions decline slowly, the temperature rise of 2°C, the limit set by the Paris Agreement will be breached by 2060.
Key points of the Report:
i.The report gave 5 scenarios for the future based on carbon emissions, as per it, the world will cross the 1.5° C warming mark in the 2030s, earlier than past predictions. If emissions are slashed in the next decade, average temperatures could still be up 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2040 and possibly 1.6 degrees Celsius by 2060 before stabilizing.
ii.As per the report’s data, the Earth’s temperature in a decade will be higher than the past level of warming that world leaders have sought to prevent.
iii.The report predicted warmer forecasts for the 21st century (near-term (2021–2040), mid-term (2041–2060) and long-term (2081–2100)) than the earlier predictions.
iv.Under the very high emission scenario with little action, temperatures are likely to rise by up to 5.7°C by the year 2100.
v.The land will continue to warm ~1.5 times more than the surface of the water, and that the Arctic will warm at twice the rate of global temperature rise.
vi.The kind of heatwave that used to happen only once every 50 years now happens once a decade, and if the world warms another degree Celsius, it will happen twice every seven years.
vii.The world could be around 3.3° C hotter than now by the end of the 21st century.
viii.The report also stated worsening cases of sea-level rise, shrinking ice, heat waves, droughts, floods, Stronger Tropical cyclones, etc.
ix.Land and ocean have taken up a near-constant proportion (globally about 56% per year) of CO2 emissions from human activities over the past six decades.
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Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed the World Environment Day event virtually on June 5, 2021, jointly organized by the Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas(MoPNG), and the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change Event’s Theme: ‘promotion of biofuels for a better environment’.
About Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC):
- It is a group put together by the United Nations (UN), comprising over 234 scientists from 66 nations.
- The team of scientists worked together to evaluate over 14,000 research papers over the past five years, culminating in AR6, which is the first of a three-part report.
Establishment – 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)
Headquarters – Geneva, Switzerland
Chair – Hoesung Lee
