It was announced yesterday, 9^th July 2021 that climate change has got worse.

The IPCC (Intergovernmental panel on climate change) – a UN group studied 14,000 academic papers related to climate change.

They concluded that human activity is changing the climate in unprecedented and sometimes irreversible ways, and warn of increasingly extreme heatwaves, droughts and flooding, and a key temperature limit being broken in just over a decade.

The report "is a code red for humanity", says the UN chief, but scientists say a catastrophe can be avoided if the world acts fast.

Dr Marta Guerriero Deputy Head of Global Sustainable Development at the University of Warwick comments:

“The latest IPCC report offers a very clear picture of the current state of our climate. Compared to previous reports, it provides strengthened – “unequivocal” – evidence that human activities have changed our climate in unprecedented and irreversible ways.

“The report also elucidates how climate change has increased the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, such as heatwaves, floods, storms and droughts, which we now see with our own eyes in every inhabited region of the globe – such as the wildfires currently raging in Greece. Climate change is already happening, it is widespread and it is intensifying.

“The report further clarifies our state of knowledge in relation to possible climate futures, including risks, and how these vary with every increment of global warming. Unsurprisingly, the negative impacts will be larger as temperatures rise.

“Released just a few months before the United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP26, the report highlights the urgency of negotiating large and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, as well as the need to adapt our societies and make them more resilient to new and more frequent weather events.

“The report is also an important reminder that coordinated efforts are critical in order to address a wicked problem such as climate change, where everyone – the civil society, the scientific community, the private sector, local, national and supranational governments – has a role to play.

“The IPCC report is powerful and timely, and it will help to shift our perceptions of the climate crisis: from a low-risk, distant (both in time and in space) problem, often overshadowed by other matters, to one of the biggest and most urgent challenges of our times.”

ENDS

10 JULY 2021

For further information contact:

Alice Scott
Media Relations Manager – Science
University of Warwick
E-mail: alice.j.scott@warwick.ac.uk

For further information contact:

Alice Scott
Media Relations Manager – Science
University of Warwick
E-mail: alice.j.scott@warwick.ac.uk