On the 20 March 2023, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published the Synthesis Report for its Sixth Assessment cycle. The full Synthesis Report is an eighty five page report and there is a shorter summary report for policymakers which has 36 pages. The report highlights the fact that urgent climate action can secure a liveable future for all, however the current pace and scale of action is insufficient to tackle change. The IPCC’s report does not present any new science but provides a summary of the findings of six reports: three working group reports and three special reports that have been published over the sixth assessment cycle from 2015. The three special reports have been reviewed by this blog and are:
The new synthesis report provides the main scientific input to the next IPCC Conference of Parties (COP28) meeting which will be held in Dubai, UAE, 30 November 2023 and into the Global Stocktake (at the end of 2023). The stocktake report will ensure that countries review their progress towards the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement goals. The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) summarises the state of knowledge of climate change, its widespread impacts and risks, and climate change mitigation and adaptation.
It focuses on the critical need for action that considers climate justice and on climate resilient development. It outlines that by sharing best practices, technology, effective policy measures, and mobilising sufficient finance, any community can decrease or prevent the usage of carbon-intensive consumption methods. The biggest gains in well-being can be achieved by prioritising climate risk reduction for low-income and marginalised communities.
The report highlights just how quickly temperatures have increased over a few hundred years from the industrial revolution. The global surface temperature was around 1.1°C above 1850–1900 level in 2011–2020 (~1.09°C) with larger increases over land (~1.59°C) than over the ocean (~0.88°C). Observed warming is human-caused, with warming from greenhouse gases (GHG), dominated by carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH 4), partly masked by aerosol cooling. Global surface temperature has increased faster since 1970 than in any other 50-year period over at least the last 2000 years. The likely range of total human-caused global surface temperature increase from 1850–1900 to 2010–2019 is 0.8°C to 1.3°C (with a best estimate of 1.07°C). It is likely that well-mixed GHGs contributed a warming of 1.0°C–2.0°C, and other human drivers, principally aerosols, contributed a cooling of 0.0°C–0.8°C, natural (solar and volcanic) drivers changed global surface temperature by ±0.1°C and internal variability changed it by ±0.2°C.
The UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, said: “This report is a clarion call to massively fast-track climate efforts by every country and every sector and on every timeframe. Our world needs climate action on all fronts: everything, everywhere, all at once.” Hoesung Lee, the chair of the IPCC, said: “This synthesis report underscores the urgency of taking more ambitious action and shows that, if we act now, we can still secure a liveable sustainable future for all.” Source: The Guardian.
Headlines from the report:
- In this decade, accelerated action to adapt to climate change is essential to close the gap between existing adaptation and what is needed.
- There is still hope of staying within 1.5°C but it requires deep, rapid and sustained greenhouse gas emissions reductions in all sectors. Emissions should be decreasing by now and will need to be cut by almost half by 2030, if warming is to be limited to 1.5°C.
- There are feasible and effective options available to countries to reduce emissions that are “technically viable” and are “becoming increasingly cost effective and are generally supported by the public”, including solar and wind energy, reducing food waste and improved land management.
- The solution lies in climate resilient development. This involves integrating measures to adapt to climate change with actions to reduce or avoid greenhouse gas emissions in ways that provide wider benefits.
- There is sufficient global capital to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions if existing barriers are reduced. Increasing finance to climate investments is important to achieve global climate goals.
- There are tried and tested policy measures that can work to achieve deep emissions reductions and climate resilience if they are scaled up and applied more widely.
- The choices and actions implemented in this decade will have impacts for thousands of years.
There are solutions that work best for multi-sectoral solutions which cut across systems. This is a holistic solution with focused investment on clean technologies and solutions. When such options are combined with broader sustainable development objectives, they can yield greater benefits for human well-being, social equity and justice, along with ecosystems and planetary health. City and regional scale strategies can be effective with an integrated design approaches with retro-fitting of buildings to make them zero-carbon buildings for example. The need to have joined up approaches is highlighted and the merits of this type approach are demonstrated. Focusing on mitigation solutions will be critical in the next few years and mitigation needs to be global.
Mapped It 