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Climate Change: Evidence and Causes: Update 2020 (2020)

Chapter: conclusion, c onclusion.

This document explains that there are well-understood physical mechanisms by which changes in the amounts of greenhouse gases cause climate changes. It discusses the evidence that the concentrations of these gases in the atmosphere have increased and are still increasing rapidly, that climate change is occurring, and that most of the recent change is almost certainly due to emissions of greenhouse gases caused by human activities. Further climate change is inevitable; if emissions of greenhouse gases continue unabated, future changes will substantially exceed those that have occurred so far. There remains a range of estimates of the magnitude and regional expression of future change, but increases in the extremes of climate that can adversely affect natural ecosystems and human activities and infrastructure are expected.

Citizens and governments can choose among several options (or a mixture of those options) in response to this information: they can change their pattern of energy production and usage in order to limit emissions of greenhouse gases and hence the magnitude of climate changes; they can wait for changes to occur and accept the losses, damage, and suffering that arise; they can adapt to actual and expected changes as much as possible; or they can seek as yet unproven “geoengineering” solutions to counteract some of the climate changes that would otherwise occur. Each of these options has risks, attractions and costs, and what is actually done may be a mixture of these different options. Different nations and communities will vary in their vulnerability and their capacity to adapt. There is an important debate to be had about choices among these options, to decide what is best for each group or nation, and most importantly for the global population as a whole. The options have to be discussed at a global scale because in many cases those communities that are most vulnerable control few of the emissions, either past or future. Our description of the science of climate change, with both its facts and its uncertainties, is offered as a basis to inform that policy debate.

A CKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The following individuals served as the primary writing team for the 2014 and 2020 editions of this document:

• Eric Wolff FRS, (UK lead), University of Cambridge
• Inez Fung (NAS, US lead), University of California, Berkeley
• Brian Hoskins FRS, Grantham Institute for Climate Change
• John F.B. Mitchell FRS, UK Met Office
• Tim Palmer FRS, University of Oxford
• Benjamin Santer (NAS), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
• John Shepherd FRS, University of Southampton
• Keith Shine FRS, University of Reading.
• Susan Solomon (NAS), Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Kevin Trenberth, National Center for Atmospheric Research
• John Walsh, University of Alaska, Fairbanks
• Don Wuebbles, University of Illinois

Staff support for the 2020 revision was provided by Richard Walker, Amanda Purcell, Nancy Huddleston, and Michael Hudson. We offer special thanks to Rebecca Lindsey and NOAA Climate.gov for providing data and figure updates.

The following individuals served as reviewers of the 2014 document in accordance with procedures approved by the Royal Society and the National Academy of Sciences:

• Richard Alley (NAS), Department of Geosciences, Pennsylvania State University
• Alec Broers FRS, Former President of the Royal Academy of Engineering
• Harry Elderfield FRS, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge
• Joanna Haigh FRS, Professor of Atmospheric Physics, Imperial College London
• Isaac Held (NAS), NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory
• John Kutzbach (NAS), Center for Climatic Research, University of Wisconsin
• Jerry Meehl, Senior Scientist, National Center for Atmospheric Research
• John Pendry FRS, Imperial College London
• John Pyle FRS, Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge
• Gavin Schmidt, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
• Emily Shuckburgh, British Antarctic Survey
• Gabrielle Walker, Journalist
• Andrew Watson FRS, University of East Anglia

The Support for the 2014 Edition was provided by NAS Endowment Funds. We offer sincere thanks to the Ralph J. and Carol M. Cicerone Endowment for NAS Missions for supporting the production of this 2020 Edition.

F OR FURTHER READING

For more detailed discussion of the topics addressed in this document (including references to the underlying original research), see:

• Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 2019: Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate [ https://www.ipcc.ch/srocc ]
• National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), 2019: Negative Emissions Technologies and Reliable Sequestration: A Research Agenda [ https://www.nap.edu/catalog/25259 ]
• Royal Society, 2018: Greenhouse gas removal [ https://raeng.org.uk/greenhousegasremoval ]
• U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), 2018: Fourth National Climate Assessment Volume II: Impacts, Risks, and Adaptation in the United States [ https://nca2018.globalchange.gov ]
• IPCC, 2018: Global Warming of 1.5°C [ https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15 ]
• USGCRP, 2017: Fourth National Climate Assessment Volume I: Climate Science Special Reports [ https://science2017.globalchange.gov ]
• NASEM, 2016: Attribution of Extreme Weather Events in the Context of Climate Change [ https://www.nap.edu/catalog/21852 ]
• IPCC, 2013: Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) Working Group 1. Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis [ https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1 ]
• NRC, 2013: Abrupt Impacts of Climate Change: Anticipating Surprises [ https://www.nap.edu/catalog/18373 ]
• NRC, 2011: Climate Stabilization Targets: Emissions, Concentrations, and Impacts Over Decades to Millennia [ https://www.nap.edu/catalog/12877 ]
• Royal Society 2010: Climate Change: A Summary of the Science [ https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/publications/2010/climate-change-summary-science ]
• NRC, 2010: America’s Climate Choices: Advancing the Science of Climate Change [ https://www.nap.edu/catalog/12782 ]

Much of the original data underlying the scientific findings discussed here are available at:

• https://data.ucar.edu/
• https://climatedataguide.ucar.edu
• https://iridl.ldeo.columbia.edu
• https://ess-dive.lbl.gov/
• https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/
• https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
• http://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu
• http://hahana.soest.hawaii.edu/hot/

Climate change is one of the defining issues of our time. It is now more certain than ever, based on many lines of evidence, that humans are changing Earth's climate. The Royal Society and the US National Academy of Sciences, with their similar missions to promote the use of science to benefit society and to inform critical policy debates, produced the original Climate Change: Evidence and Causes in 2014. It was written and reviewed by a UK-US team of leading climate scientists. This new edition, prepared by the same author team, has been updated with the most recent climate data and scientific analyses, all of which reinforce our understanding of human-caused climate change.

Scientific information is a vital component for society to make informed decisions about how to reduce the magnitude of climate change and how to adapt to its impacts. This booklet serves as a key reference document for decision makers, policy makers, educators, and others seeking authoritative answers about the current state of climate-change science.

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4 guidelines for writing about climate change

The climate story has moved beyond science and is increasingly local . It touches communities and coverage in new ways every day. As you cover the topic in your area, here are some guidelines for your reporting.

Do not conflate science and policy. They are separate things. Science informs policymaking but it does not dictate what policies should be chosen. Different people may reach different conclusions, depending on what they value.

Be specific about which climate change “debate” you are covering. There is no single debate; there are separate debates within science, within policy and within economics, and debates about how scientific findings should guide policy.

Be clear about the science. The overarching issue is as settled as things get in science: The planet is warming and humans are largely responsible. As a result, glaciers and ice sheets are melting. New, contradictory evidence could come along–science is always subject to revision. But the idea that humans are causing climate change is not scientifically controversial.

Avoid “global warming: yes or no?” coverage. Although there are still many scientific questions to be answered, the climate change story has shifted to policy. What should we do, if anything, about climate change? Just as governments routinely make decisions about fiscal policy under great uncertainty, environmental policy can proceed even though scientific uncertainties remain.

Taken from Covering Climate Change , a self-directed course by Tom Yulsman at Poynter NewsU .

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Climate Reports

Key reports on climate impacts and solutions from around the United Nations.

UNFCCC | NDC Synthesis Report

National climate action plans remain insufficient to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius and meet the goals of the Paris Agreement.

Read the report

UNEP | Production Gap Report

Governments plan to produce double the fossil fuels in 2030 than would be consistent with limiting warming to 1.5°C.

UNEP | Adaptation Gap Report

Progress on climate adaptation is slowing when it should be accelerating to catch up with rising climate impacts.

• Action and Assessments

WMO | State of the Climate in Latin America and the Caribbean 2023

The WMO State of the Climate in Latin America and the Caribbean 2023 report confirmed that it was by far the warmest year on record. Sea levels continued to rise at a higher rate than the global average around much of the Atlantic region, threatening coastal areas and small island developing States.The report highlights the need for more investment in National Meteorological and Hydrological Services to strengthen forecasts and life-saving early warnings

WMO | State of the Climate in Asia 2023

23 April 2024

Asia remained the world’s most disaster-hit region from weather, climate and water-related hazards in 2023. Floods and storms caused the highest number of reported casualties and economic losses, whilst the impact of heatwaves became more severe, according to the report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

WMO | State of the Climate in Europe 2023

22 April 2024

In 2023, the impacts of climate change continued to be seen across Europe, with millions of people impacted by extreme weather events, making the development of mitigation and adaptation measurements a priority. The report provides descriptions and analysis of climate conditions and variations from across the Earth system, key events and their impacts, and a discussion of climate policy and action with a focus on human health.

WMO | State of Global Climate 2023 Report

19 March 2024

The State of the Global Climate 2023 report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) shows that records were once again broken, and in some cases smashed, for greenhouse gas levels, surface temperatures, ocean heat and acidification, sea level rise, Antarctic sea ice cover and glacier retreat. Weather hazards continued to trigger displacement in 2023, showing how climate shocks undermine resilience and create new protection risks among the most vulnerable populations

WMO | The Global Climate 2011-2020: A Decade of Acceleration

5 December 2023

The rate of climate change surged alarmingly between 2011-2020, which was the warmest decade on record. Continued rising concentrations of greenhouse gases fuelled record land and ocean temperatures and turbo-charged a dramatic acceleration in ice melt and sea level rise, according to a new report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The report, “the Global Climate 2011-2020: A Decade of Acceleration” emphasizes the need for much more ambitious climate action to try to limit global temperature rise to no more than 1.5°C above the pre-industrial era.

UNEP | An Eye on Methane: International Methane Emissions Observatory 2023 Report

1 December 2023

The latest “Eye on Methane” report from the UN Environment Programme and the International Methane Emissions Observatory takes stock of progress harnessing an imminent data revolution that can accelerate methane reduction on a global scale. Credible data has the potential to deliver the transparency needed for rapid climate action, but only if reconciled, integrated and put into the hands of those who can act on it. The report provides decision makers a framework of action to track and monitor methane emissions to plan targeted and ambitious action.

WMO | Provisional State of the Global Climate 2023

30 November 2023

The provisional State of the Global Climate report by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) confirms that 2023 is set to be the warmest year on record. Data until the end of October shows that the year was about 1.4 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial 1850-1900 baseline. The past nine years, 2015 to 2023, were also the warmest on record. “Greenhouse gas levels are record high. Global temperatures are record high. Sea level rise is record high. Antarctic sea ice is record low. It’s a deafening cacophony of broken records,” said WMO Secretary-General Prof. Petteri Taalas.

UNEP | Emissions Gap Report 2023

20 November 2023

This report by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) finds that current pledges under the Paris Agreement put the world on track for a 2.5-2.9°C temperature rise above pre-industrial levels this century – far above the 1.5°C limit that would avoid the worst impacts of climate change. The report also finds that none of the G20 countries are reducing emissions at a pace consistent with their net-zero targets. The report calls for all nations to deliver economy-wide, low-carbon development transformations, with a focus on the energy transition.

WMO | Greenhouse Gas Bulletin

15 November 2023

The abundance of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere once again reached a new record in 2022, according to this report from the World Meteorological Organization. Global averaged concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2), the most important greenhouse gas, were a full 50 per cent above the pre-industrial era for the first time, and they continued to grow in 2023. Methane concentrations also grew, and levels of nitrous oxide, the third main gas, saw the highest year-on-year increase on record from 2021 to 2022.

WHO | The Lancet Countdown Report

Climate inaction is costing lives and livelihoods today, with new global projections revealing the grave and mounting threat to health of further delayed action on climate change. But profound and swift action to tackle the root causes of climate change and to support adaptation efforts could offer a lifeline for health. In its eighth iteration, this report draws on the expertise of 114 scientists and health practitioners from 52 research institutions and UN agencies, including the World Health Organization, to provide its most comprehensive assessment yet, tracking the relationship between health and climate change across five key domains and 47 indicators.

UNU-EHS | Interconnected Disaster Risks 2023

25 October 2023

Interconnected Disaster Risks is an annual science-based report from the United Nations University – Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS). The 2023 report warns of six tipping points ahead of us and the role climate change plays in pushing us towards these tipping points. It explains the potential consequences of surpassing these thresholds for both people and planet and assesses options to avoid them through a new framework that categorizes risk mitigation solutions into four types: avoid, adapt, delay, and transform.

WMO | United in Science 2023

14 September 2023

At the halfway point of the 2030 Agenda, the science is clear – the planet is far off track from meeting its climate goals. This undermines global efforts to tackle hunger, poverty and ill-health, improve access to clean water and energy and many other aspects of sustainable development, according the United in Science 2023 report, a multi-agency report coordinated by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

WMO | State of the Climate in the South-West Pacific 2022

18 August 2023

Sea level rise threatens the future of low-lying islands whilst increasing ocean heat and acidification harms vital and vulnerable marine ecosystems, according to the State of the Climate in the South-West Pacific 2022 report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The report provides a snapshot of climate indicators including temperatures, sea level rise, ocean heat and acidification, and extreme weather events in 2022. It also highlights the socio-economic risks and impacts on key sectors like agriculture.

WMO | State of the Climate in Asia 2022

27 July 2023

Extreme weather and climate change impacts are increasing in Asia, which ricocheted between droughts and floods in 2022, ruining lives and destroying livelihoods. Melting ice and glaciers and rising sea levels threaten more socio-economic disruption in future, according to a new report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The expected increase in the frequency and severity of extreme events over much of Asia will impact agriculture, which is central to all climate adaptation planning.

WMO | State of the Climate in Latin America and the Caribbean 2022

5 July 2023

Extreme weather and climate shocks are becoming more acute in Latin America and the Caribbean, as the long-term warming trend and sea level rise accelerate, according to WMO’s report on the state of the climate in the region. Temperatures over the past 30 years have warmed at the highest rate on record and the newly arrived El Niño is likely to further increase temperatures and bring even more extreme weather. The report addresses agriculture, food security, and energy as top priority areas for adaptation and mitigation, highlighting the impacts of persistent droughts and the unexploited potential of renewable energy. The report also stresses the need for strengthened early warning systems across the region.

WMO | State of the Climate in Europe 2022

19 June 2023

Climate change is taking a major human, economic and environmental toll in Europe, the fastest warming continent of the world. The year 2022 was marked by extreme heat, drought and wildfires. Sea surface temperatures around Europe reached new highs, accompanied by marine heatwaves. Glacier melt was unprecedented. The State of the Climate in Europe 2022 report, the second in an annual series, was produced jointly by the World Meteorological Organization and the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.

WMO | Global Annual to Decadal Climate Update

17 May 2023

Global temperatures are likely to surge to record levels in the next five years, fueled by heat-trapping greenhouse gases and a naturally occurring El Niño. According to this report issued by the World Meteorological Organization, there is a 66% likelihood that the annual average near-surface global temperature between 2023 and 2027 will be more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels for at least one year. There is a 98% likelihood that at least one of the next five years, and the five-year period as a whole, will be the warmest on record. The Paris Agreement refers to the 1.5°C threshold for long-term warming over many years. This report predicts the level will be breached temporarily, with increasing frequency, but not permanently.

IPCC | Climate Change 2023: Synthesis Report

20 March 2023

More than a century of burning fossil fuels as well as unequal and unsustainable energy and land use have led to global warming of 1.1°C above pre -industrial levels. This has resulted in more frequent and more intense extreme weather events that have caused increasingly dangerous impacts on nature and people in every region of the world. But there are multiple, feasible and effective options to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to human-caused climate change, and they are available now, said scientists in this IPCC report. Taking effective and equitable climate action will not only reduce losses and damages for nature and people, it will also provide wider benefits, the report points out, underscoring the urgency of taking more ambitious action now to secure a livable sustainable future for all.

UNEP | One Atmosphere: An Independent Expert Review on Solar Radiation Modification Research and Deployment

27 February 2023

Solar Radiation Modification – a speculative group of technologies to cool the Earth – requires far more research into its risks and benefits before any consideration for potential deployment, according to an Expert Panel convened by the United Nations Environment Programme. The panel finds that Solar Radiation Modification is not yet ready for large-scale deployment to cool the Earth. Rapid reduction in greenhouse gas emissions must remain the global priority, the report states.

WMO | State of the Global Climate in 2022

21 April 2023

The State of the Global Climate 2022 shows the planetary-scale changes on land, in the ocean and in the atmosphere caused by record levels of heat-trapping greenhouse gases. The years 2015-2022 were the eight warmest on record, despite the cooling impact of a La Niña event for the past three years. Melting of glaciers and sea level rise - which again reached record levels in 2022 - will continue to up to thousands of years. Antarctic sea ice fell to its lowest extent on record, and the melting of some European glaciers was, literally, off the charts.

UNEP | Emissions Gap Report 2022: The Closing Window

27 October 2022

Inadequate progress on climate action calls for urgent sector and system-wide transformations – in the electricity supply, industry, transport and buildings sectors, and the food and financial systems – as current climate pledges leave the world on track for a temperature rise of 2.4-2.6°C by the end of this century.

26 October, 2022

The latest report warns that atmospheric levels of the three main greenhouse gases - carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide - reached new record highs in 2021, showing the biggest year-on-year jump in methane concentrations since systematic measurements began nearly 40 years ago. Moreover, the increase in carbon dioxide levels from 2020 to 2021 was larger than the average annual growth rate over the last decade.

WMO | United in Science 2022

13 September 2022

As global warming increases, “tipping points” in the climate system cannot be ruled out and the ambition of emissions reduction pledges for 2030 needs to be seven times higher to be in line with the 1.5 °C goal of the Paris Agreement.

WMO | State of the Climate in Africa 2021

8 September 2022

Water stress and hazards like withering droughts and devastating floods are hitting African communities, economies, and ecosystems hard. Rising water demand combined with limited and unpredictable supplies threatens to aggravate conflict and displacement.

IPCC | Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change

4 April 2022

Without immediate and deep emissions reductions across all sectors, limiting global warming to 1.5°C (2.7°F) is beyond reach. In the scenarios assessed, limiting warming to around 1.5°C requires global greenhouse gas emissions to peak before 2025 at the latest, and be reduced by 43% by 2030; at the same time, methane would also need to be reduced by about a third. According to the report, there is increasing evidence of climate action. In 2010-2019, average annual global greenhouse gas emissions were at their highest levels in human history, but the rate of growth has slowed. An increasing range of policies and laws have enhanced energy efficiency, reduced rates of deforestation and accelerated the deployment of renewable energy.

WMO | State of Global Climate 2021

18 May 2022

Record atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations and associated accumulated heat have propelled the planet into uncharted territory, with far-reaching repercussions for current and future generations. This report finds the past seven years are on track to be the seven warmest on record, based on data for the first nine months of 2021. A temporary cooling “La Niña” event early in the year means that 2021 is expected to be “only” the fifth to seventh warmest year on record. But this does not negate or reverse the long-term trend of rising temperatures. Global sea level rise accelerated since 2013 to a new high in 2021, with continued ocean warming and ocean acidification. The report combines input from multiple United Nations agencies, national meteorological and hydrological services and scientific experts. It highlights impacts on food security and population displacement, harming crucial ecosystems and undermining progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals.

IPCC | Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation, Vulnerability

28 February 2022

Human-induced climate change is causing dangerous and widespread disruption in nature and is affecting the lives of billions of people around the world, says this Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. People and ecosystems least able to cope are being hardest hit. Increased heatwaves, droughts and floods are already exceeding plants and animals’ tolerance thresholds, driving mass mortalities in species such as trees and corals. These weather extremes are occurring simultaneously, causing cascading impacts that are increasingly difficult to manage. They have exposed millions of people to acute food and water insecurity, especially in Africa, Asia, Central and South America, on small islands and in the Arctic. To avoid mounting loss of life, biodiversity and infrastructure, urgent, ambitious, and accelerated action is required to adapt to climate change, at the same time as making rapid, deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.

WMO| Greenhouse Gas Bulletin

25 October 2021

The abundance of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere once again reached a new record in 2020, with the annual rate of increase above the 2011-2020 average. That trend has continued in 2021, according to the latest Greenhouse Gas Bulletin. Concentration of carbon dioxide, the most important greenhouse gas, reached 413.2 parts per million in 2020 and is 149 per cent of the pre-industrial level. Methane is 262 per cent of the level in 1750 when human activities started disrupting the Earth’s natural equilibrium. The economic slowdown from COVID-19 did not have any discernible impact on atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases and their growth rates, although there was a temporary decline in new emissions. Roughly half of carbon dioxide emitted by human activities today remains in the atmosphere. The other half is taken up by oceans and land ecosystems, but their ability to act as “sinks” may become less effective in the future.

WMO and others | The State of the Climate in Africa 2020

19 October 2021

This report provides a snapshot of climate change trends and impacts in Africa, including sea level rise and the melting of the continent’s iconic glaciers. It highlights the region’s disproportionate vulnerability and shows how the potential benefits of investments in climate adaptation, weather and climate services and early warning systems far outweigh the costs. The report adds to the scientific evidence underlining the urgency of cutting global greenhouse gas emissions, stepping up climate ambition and increasing financing for adaptation. Greater weather and climate variability mean that up to 118 million extremely poor people in Africa may face drought, floods and extreme heat by 2030. Without response measures, poverty alleviation efforts will slow and gross domestic product could fall by up to 3 percent by 2050.

UN | United in Science 2021

16 September 2021

COVID-19 paused but did not slow the relentless advance of climate change. Record levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere commit the planet to dangerous future warming, according to a new report that links the latest findings from across the United Nations. Rising global temperatures are fuelling extreme weather throughout the world, impacting economies and societies. The average global temperature for the past five years was among the highest on record, and the scale of recent changes across the global climate system is unprecedented over many centuries to many thousands of years. Even with ambitious action to slow greenhouse gas emissions, sea levels will continue to rise and threaten low-lying islands and coastal populations throughout the world. The findings reinforce critical momentum behind climate action to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

IPCC | Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis

9 August 2021

Climate change is widespread, rapid and intensifying. That is the key finding of the latest scientific report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It finds changes in the Earth’s climate in every region and across the whole climate system. Many changes are unprecedented in thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years. Some, such as continued sea-level rise, are irreversible over hundreds to thousands of years. The report points to strong and sustained reductions in emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to limit climate change. Benefits for air quality would come quickly, while global temperatures would take 20-30 years to stabilize. The report, issued by the IPCC’s Working Group I and approved by 195 member governments, is the first in a series leading up to the 2022 IPCC Sixth Assessment Report. It includes a closer look at the regional dimensions of climate change and builds on advances in attributing specific weather and climate events to climate change.

WMO | State of the Global Climate 2020

20 April 2021

The State of the Global Climate 2020 finds the year was one of the three warmest on record, despite a cooling La Niña event. The global average temperature was about 1.2° Celsius above the pre-industrial (1850-1900) level. The six years since 2015 have been the warmest on record, with 2011-2020 the warmest decade on record. The report documents indicators of the climate system, including greenhouse gas concentrations, increasing land and ocean temperatures, sea level rise, melting ice and glacier retreat and extreme weather. It also highlights impacts on socioeconomic development, migration and displacement, food security and land and marine ecosystems.

23 November 2020

The global slowdown from the COVID-19 pandemic has not curbed rising levels of greenhouse gases, said the World Meteorological Organization in releasing its latest WMO Greenhouse Gas Bulletin. Carbon dioxide levels have pushed past another record threshold, after rising in 2019 at a rate faster than the average for the last 10 years.

WMO | The State of the Climate in Africa 2019

26 October 2020

Increasing temperatures and sea levels, changing precipitation patterns and more extreme weather are threatening human health and safety, food and water security and socio-economic development in Africa, according to the State of the Climate in Africa Report devoted exclusively to the continent. The report provides a snapshot of current and future climate trends and associated impacts on the economy and sensitive sectors like agriculture. It highlights lessons for climate action in Africa and identifies pathways for addressing critical gaps and challenges.

WMO | 2020 State of Climate Services 2020

13 October 2020

Between 1970 and 2019, 79% of disasters worldwide involved weather, water, and climate-related hazards. These disasters accounted for 56% of deaths and 75% of economic losses from disasters associated with natural hazards reported during that period. As climate change continues to threaten human lives, ecosystems and economies, risk information and early warning systems (EWS) are increasingly seen as key for reducing these impacts. This latest WMO report highlights progress made in EWS capacity – and identifies where and how governments can invest in effective EWS to strengthen countries’ resilience to multiple weather, water and climate-related hazards.

WMO | United in Science 2020

9 September 2020

Climate change has not stopped for COVID19. United in Science 2020, a new multi-agency report from leading science organizations, highlights the increasing and irreversible impacts of climate change, which affects glaciers, oceans, nature, economies and human living conditions and is often felt through water-related hazards like drought or flooding. It also documents how COVID-19 has impeded our ability to monitor these changes through the global observing system.

WMO | State of the Global Climate in 2019

10 March 2020

The tell-tale physical signs of climate change, such as increasing land and ocean heat, accelerating sea level rise and melting ice, contributed to making 2019 the second warmest year on record according to a new report compiled by a network led by the World Meteorological Organization. The report documents the increasing impacts of weather and climate events on socio-economic development, human health, migration and displacement, food security and land and marine ecosystems.

WMO | State of the Global Climate in 2018

28 March 2019

The physical signs and socio-economic impacts of climate change are accelerating as record greenhouse gas concentrations drive global temperatures towards increasingly dangerous levels, according to a new report from the World Meteorological Organization.

The WMO Statement on the State of the Global Climate in 2018 , its 25th anniversary edition, highlights record sea level rise, as well as exceptionally high land and ocean temperatures over the past four years. This warming trend has lasted since the start of this century and is expected to continue.

IPCC | Special Report

8 October 2018

Limiting global warming to 1.5ºC would require rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in a new assessment. With clear benefits to people and natural ecosystems, limiting global warming to 1.5ºC compared to 2ºC could go hand in hand with ensuring a more sustainable and equitable society.

22 November 2018

The WMO Greenhouse Gas Bulletin reports on atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases in the earth’s atmosphere. The report found that levels of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have reached another new record high, according to the World Meteorological Organization. There is no sign of a reversal in this trend, which is driving long-term climate change, sea level rise, ocean acidification and more extreme weather.

IPCC | AR5 Synthesis Report: Climate Change 2014

2 November 2014

The Synthesis Report (SYR) of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) provides an overview of the state of knowledge concerning the science of climate change. It shows that human influence on the climate system is clear, and recent anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are the highest in history. Recent climate changes have had widespread impacts on human and natural systems.

Limiting Climate Change

UNESCO | Press and Planet in Danger

In its new report Press and Planet in Danger, UNESCO revealed instances in which at least 749 journalists and news media outlets reporting on environmental issues were targeted with murder, physical violence, detention and arrest, online harassment or legal attacks in the period 2009-2023. More than 300 attacks occurred between 2019-2023 – a 42% increase on the preceding five-year period (2014-2018).

ILO | Ensuring safety and health at work in a changing climate

A “staggering” number of workers, amounting to more than 70 per cent of the global workforce, are likely to be exposed to climate-change-related health hazards, and existing occupational safety and health (OSH) protections are struggling to keep up with the resulting risks, according to te report by the International Labour Organization (ILO).

REN21 | Renewables 2024 Global Status Report – Global Overview Module

4 April 2024

As the first module of the Global Status Report 2024 series, the Global Overview provides the big picture status of renewables in the wider energy system and in the context of global challenges such as climate change, development goals, and the geopolitical landscape.

UNDOC | Turning the Tide: A Look Into the European Union-to-Southeast Asia Waste Trafficking Wave

2 April 2024

“Turning the Tide” is the cornerstone publication in a series produced through the Unwaste project to take an in-depth look at the many facets of waste trafficking . The new research sheds light on how criminal actors exploit legal trade and regulatory and enforcement loopholes for financial gain. It also explores the negative impact this crime has on the global circular economy.

UNEP | Food Waste Index Report 2024

27 March 2024

Food waste continues to hurt the global economy and fuel climate change, nature loss, and pollution. These are the key findings of the UNEP Food Waste Index Report 2024. The report provides the most accurate global estimate on food waste at retail and consumer levels. It provides guidance for countries on improving data collection and suggests best practices in moving from measuring to reducing food waste.

UNEP | Global Status Report for Buildings and Construction

6 March 2024

The Global Status Report for Buildings and Construction tracks progress and outlines recommendations for governments, industry, and civil society towards a zero-emission, efficient, and resilient buildings sector by 2050. The report finds that in 2022 the sector accounted for 37 per cent of global operational energy and process-related CO2 emissions, rising to just under 10 Gt CO2. Its energy consumption reached 132 exajoules, more than a third of global demand.

UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment | Prioritizing Profits over People and Planet: The Devastating Impacts of Large Businesses on the Right to a Clean, Healthy and Sustainable Environment

This Policy Brief accompanies the Special Rapporteur’s report, “Businesses, Planetary Boundaries and the Right to a Clean, Healthy and Sustainable Environment.” That report includes an annex of good practices, whereas this policy brief is akin to a report on bad practices — business activities that have caused or contributed to human rights abuses specifically related to the right to a healthy environment.

FAO | The Unjust Climate Report

5 March 2024

The Unjust Climate report highlights a stark reality: each year in low and middle-income countries, female heads of households in rural areas suffer significantly greater financial losses than men. On average, female-headed households lose 8 per cent more of their income due to heat stress and 3 per cent more due to floods compared to male-headed households. This translates to a total of $37 billion (USD) lost due to heat stress and $16 billion due to floods, across low and middle-income countries.

UNEP | Global Resources Outlook 2024

1 March 2024

The Global Resources Outlook 2024 report sheds light on how resources are essential to the effective implementation of the 2030 Agenda and multilateral environmental agreements to tackle the triple planetary crisis. The report illustrates how, since the 2019 edition of this report, rising trends in global resource use have continued or accelerated. The report also shows how, without urgent and concerted action, by 2060 resource extraction could rise by 60% from 2020 levels – driving increasing damage and risks.

UNEP | Global Waste Management Outlook 2024: "Beyond an age of waste: Turning rubbish into a resource"

28 February 2024

The UNEP Global Waste Management Outlook 2024 (GWMO 2024) provides the most substantial update on global waste generation and the cost of waste and its management since 2018. The analysis uses life cycle assessments to explore what the world could gain or lose through continuing business-as-usual, adopting halfway measures, or committing fully to zero waste and circular economy societies.

UN-Habitat | Local Action for Global Goals: An Opportunity for Enhancing Nationally Determined Contributions

23 February 2024

Home to over half of the world’s population and responsible for about 70 per cent of global emissions, cities are at the heart of the climate crisis.This analysis from UN-Habitat identifies opportunities to strengthen the urban content across national climate action plans, known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs) , as key to raising their overall ambition and to strengthen the effective operationalization of climate adaptation and mitigation policies.

UNEP and CCAC | Used Heavy- Duty Vehicles and the Environment: A Global Overview of Used Heavy-Duty Vehicles: Flow, Scale and Regulation

22 February 2024

This report launched by the UNEP and the Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC) provides a first global overview by the UN of the scale and regulation of used heavy-duty vehicles (HDVs) and their contribution to global air pollution, road accidents, fuel consumption and climate emissions. The report recommends ways to reduce the harmful aspects of used HDVs on people’s health and the climate.

UNEP | What’s cooking? An assessment of the potential impact of select novel alternatives to conventional animal products

8 December 2023

Emerging novel alternatives to animal products such as meat and dairy may contribute to significantly reducing the environmental footprint of the current global food system, particularly in high- and middle-income countries, provided they use low-carbon energy. This is a key finding of a new UN Environment Programme (UNEP) assessment, “What’s cooking?” which finds that these alternatives not only show significant potential for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, but they can also contribute to reductions in land degradation and deforestation, water and soil pollution and loss of biodiversity, as well as to reducing the risks of zoonotic diseases and anti-microbial resistance.

UNEP | Global Cooling Watch 2023 report

The Global Cooling Watch 2023 report from the Cool Coalition let by UN Environment Programme (UNEP) assesses national policy and regulatory actions across all cooling sectors, based on a survey of 192 countries. The report demonstrates the potential and the pathways to achieve near-zero emissions in the key cooling sectors and provides a call to action for countries to pursue the policies and strategies that have the greatest impact in reducing cooling-related emissions and advancing sustainable cooling for all.

UN Women | Feminist Climate Justice: A Framework for Action report

4 December 2023

By 2050, climate change will push up to 158 million more women and girls into poverty and lead to 236 million more women into hunger, according to the UN Women "Feminist Climate Justice: A Framework for Action" report. The climate crisis fuels escalating conflict and forced migration, in a context of exclusionary, anti-rights political rhetoric targeting women, refugees, and other marginalized groups. The report describes how to achieve feminist climate justice through four interlinked dimensions (recognition, redistribution, representation, and reparation) and the principles of interdependence and intersectionality. It provides practical guidance on what countries need to do to transition to low-emission economies that are resilient to a changing climate, while recognizing the leadership of women, girls, and gender-diverse people in driving the change that is so urgently needed.

UNDRR | 2023 Global Status of Multi-Hazard Early Warning Systems

3 December 2023

The 2023 Global Status of Multi-Hazard Early Warning Systems report from the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reveals that more lives are being protected from extreme weather and dangerous climate change impacts but there is a long way to go. Although early warnings coverage has doubled since 2015, half of countries globally still do not have adequate multi-hazard early warning systems.

14 November 2023

A new report from UN Climate Change finds national climate action plans remain insufficient to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius and meet the goals of the Paris Agreement. Even with increased efforts by some countries, the report shows much more action is needed now to bend the world’s emissions trajectory further downward and avoid the worst impacts of climate change. UNFCCC analyzed the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs - national climate action plans) of 195 Parties to the Paris Agreement, including 20 new or updated NDCs submitted up until 25 September 2023.

UNICEF | The Climate-Changed Child

13 November 2023

The climate crisis is not just changing the planet – it is changing children. From the moment of conception until they grow into adulthood, the health and development of children’s brains, lungs, immune systems and other critical functions are affected by the environment they grow up in. This report throws a spotlight on the threat to children as a result of water vulnerability, one of the ways in which the impacts of climate change are being felt. It provides an analysis of the impacts of three tiers of water security globally – water scarcity, water vulnerability, and water stress.

UNEP | Production Gap Report 2023

8 November 2023

The Production Gap Report — produced by Stockholm Environment Institute, Climate Analytics, E3G, International Institute for Sustainable Development, and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) — assesses governments’ planned and projected production of coal, oil, and gas against global levels consistent with the Paris Agreement’s temperature goal. The 2023 report finds that governments plan to produce around 110% more fossil fuels in 2030 than would be consistent with limiting global warming to 1.5°C, and 69% more than would be consistent with 2°C.

UNEP | Adaptation Gap Report 2023

2 November 2023

The report, titled “Underfinanced. Underprepared – Inadequate investment and planning on climate adaptation leaves world exposed,” finds that progress on climate adaptation is slowing when it should be accelerating to catch up with these rising climate change impacts. The report identifies seven ways to increase financing for adaptation, including through domestic expenditure and international and private sector finance.

WMO | State of Climate Services for Health 2023

Climate change threatens to reverse decades of progress towards better health and well-being, particularly in the most vulnerable communities. Scientific know-how and resources can help redress the balance, but are not sufficiently accessible or utilized, according to a new multi-agency report coordinated by the World Meteorological Organization.

UNICEF | Children displaced in a changing climate

06 October 2023

The report notes that there were 43.1 million internal displacements of children linked to weather-related disasters over a six-year period – the equivalent to approximately 20,000 child displacements per day. Almost all – 95 per cent – of recorded child displacements were driven by floods and storms. Looking to the future, the hazard likely to trigger the most child displacements is riverine floods, the report says, with an average of almost 3.2 million children displaced every year. This would represent almost 96 million displacements over the next 30 years.

UNFCCC | Synthesis report on the elements for the outcome of the first global stocktake

04 October 2023

Designed to help governments reach a decision on the global stocktake at COP28, this report reflects the views of governments on the main elements that could constitute such a decision. The global stocktake -- part of the Paris Agreement -- is key to assessing the world’s global response to the climate crisis and charting a better way forward. The synthesis report represents the views of 180 Parties and 44 non-Party stakeholders.

UNFCCC | Synthesis report on the technical dialogue of the first global stocktake

08 September 2023

The most extensive review of global climate action to date, incorporating inputs from scientists, business leaders, indigenous communities, civil society, government officials and more, provides a comprehensive assessment of the collective progress towards achieving the purpose and long-term goals of the Paris Agreement. The report points to some progress but emphasizes the need for accelerated action on all fronts to respond to the climate crisis.

UNEP | Global Climate Litigation Report: 2023 Status Review

According to a report published by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, climate litigation has more than doubled since 2017 and is growing worldwide, showing it is becoming an integral part of securing climate action and justice. The report demonstrates how courts are finding strong human rights linkages to climate change, which has lead to greater protections for the most vulnerable groups in society, as well as increased accountability, transparency and justice, compelling governments and corporations to pursue more ambitious climate change mitigation and adaptation goals.

UN Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction (GAR 2023)

11 July 2023

The UN Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction (GAR 2023) highlights how resilience can be strengthened to withstand and respond to shocks. This includes investments in early warning systems where the benefits triple in vulnerable contexts because of their proven ability to reduce damage.

Tracking SDG7: The Energy Progress Report 2023

6 June 2023

Much remains to be done to deliver sustainable, secure and affordable access to modern energy services to the billions of people who still live without it, the report finds. Electricity use from renewable sources – such as wind, solar, geothermal and hydropower – has grown from 26.3 percent in 2019 to 28.2 percent in 2020, the largest single-year increase since the start of tracking progress on the Sustainable Development Goals. And a record-breaking 268 watts of renewable energy per capita was installed in developing countries in 2021 – a 9.8 percent year-on-year increase. Yet, efforts to increase the share of renewables in heating and transport, which represent more than three quarters of global energy consumption, remain off track, and growth in renewables is unevenly distributed, requiring further action including international cooperation and financing, in particular for least developed countries.

WMO | Atlas of Mortality and Economic Losses from Weather, Climate and Water-related Hazards (1970-2021)

23 May 2023

Extreme weather, climate and water-related events caused 11,778 reported disasters between 1970 and 2021, with just over 2 million deaths and US$ 4.3 trillion in economic losses, according to new data from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Economic losses have soared. But improved early warnings and coordinated disaster management has slashed the human casualty toll over the past half a century. Over 90 per cent of reported deaths worldwide occurred in developing countries.

UNEP & WMO | Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion

9 January 2023

This report by a UN-backed panel of experts confirms that the ozone layer is successfully recovering, thanks to a phase-out of nearly 99 per cent of banned ozone-depleting substances through the Montreal Protocol. The efforts to protect the ozone layer have also helped address climate change, allowing the world to avoid up to 0.5°C of warming by 2100, thanks to a phase-down of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), which are powerful greenhouse gases. In its quadrennial report, the Scientific Assessment Panel to the Montreal Protocol on Ozone Depleting Substances for the first time also examines geoengineering and warns of unintended impacts on the ozone layer of technologies such as the intentional addition of aerosols into the stratosphere, known as stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI). SAI has been proposed as a potential method to reduce climate warming by increasing sunlight reflection.

UNEP | The State of the World’s Peatlands

17 November 2022

The Global Peatlands Assessment, which is the most comprehensive assessment to-date, shows that the Earth is losing 500,000 hectares of peatlands a year, while already drained and degraded peatlands contribute around 4 per cent of annual global human-induced emissions.

WMO | State of the Climate in Asia 2021

14 November 2022

The State of the Climate in Asia 2021 report highlights how climate change impacts are wreaking an ever-increasing human, financial and environmental toll, worsening food insecurity and poverty and holding back sustainable development. Economic losses from drought, floods and landslides have rocketed in Asia. In 2021 alone, weather and water-related hazards caused total damage of US$ 35.6 billion, affecting nearly 50 million people.

UNEP | 2022 Global Status Report for Buildings and Construction

2 November 2022

The report provides an annual snapshot of the progress of the buildings and construction sector on a global scale and reviews the status of policies, finance, technologies, and solutions to monitor whether the sector is aligned with the Paris Agreement goals.

WMO | Executive Action Plan for the Early Warnings for All

7 November 2022

The Executive Action Plan for the Early Warnings for All initiative calls for initial new targeted investments between 2023 and 2027 of US$3.1 billion – a sum which would be dwarfed by the benefits. This is about 6 percent of the requested US$ 50 billion in adaptation financing. It would cover disaster risk knowledge, observations and forecasting, preparedness and response, and communication of early warnings.

UNEP | Adaptation Gap Report 2022

3 November 2022

As climate impacts intensify across the globe, countries must dramatically increase funding and implementation of actions designed to help vulnerable nations and communities adapt to the climate storm, according to the latest UN Environment Programme Emissions Gap Report.

UNFCCC | Nationally Determined Contributions under the Paris Agreement

16 October 2022

A synthesis of nationally determined contributions required under the Paris Agreement underlines that efforts remain insufficient to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 °C by the end of the century. According to the report, the combined climate pledges of 193 Parties under the Paris Agreement could put the world on track for around 2.5 degrees Celsius of warming by the end of the century. Current commitments are projected to increase emissions by 10.6% by 2030, compared to 2010 levels – an improvement over last year’s assessment, which found countries were on a path to increase emissions by 13.7% by 2030 – but far from the 45% decrease needed to limit temperature rise to 1.5 °C.

UNICEF | The coldest year of the rest of their lives: Protecting children from the escalating impacts of heatwaves

25 October 2022

Latest research from UNICEF shows that 559 million children are currently exposed to high heatwave frequency, where there are on average 4.5 or more heatwaves per year. Further, 624 million children are exposed to one of three other high heat measures - high heatwave duration, high heatwave severity or extreme high temperatures. It warns that even at lower levels of global heating, in just three decades, more regular heatwaves are unavoidable for children everywhere.

OCHA/IFRC | Extreme heat: Preparing for the heatwaves of the future

10 October 2022

Heatwaves already kill thousands of people every year, and they will become deadlier with every further increment of climate change. They demand a humanitarian response that is locally grounded, that acts quickly with data and analysis, and that works in partnerships with local governments, civil society, and development actors to protect the most vulnerable people.

WMO | 2022 State of Climate Services: Energy

11 October 2022

The supply of electricity from clean energy sources must double within the next eight years to limit global temperature increase. Otherwise, there is a risk that climate change, more extreme weather and water stress will undermine our energy security and even jeopardize renewable energy supplies, according to a new multi-agency report from the World Meteorological Organization.

UNDRR | Global status of multi-hazard early warning systems

13 October 2022

A report from the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction and the World Meteorological Organization warns that half of the countries globally are not protected by multi-hazard early warning systems.

UNU-EHS | Interconnected Disaster Risks

18 October 2022

In recent years, the world has witnessed catastrophic disasters, from record-breaking heat waves to floods, extreme droughts, wildfires and earthquakes. The latest edition of the Interconnected Disaster Risks report analyzes ten disasters around the world, looking at how they are correlated, share the same root causes compounded by the same issues and should no longer be viewed in isolation.

ILO and IRENA | Renewable Energy and Jobs: Annual Review 2022

22 September 2022

The new report by the International Renewable Energy Agency in collaboration with the International Labour Organization provides the latest estimates of renewable energy employment globally.

REN21 | Renewables 2022 Global Status Report

15 June 2022

We are facing the biggest global energy crisis in history with rising energy consumption and a hike in fossil fuel use which is outpacing growth in renewables in 2021, warns a new report from REN21.

WHO | Climate action must include mental health

3 June 2022

Climate change exacerbates social, environmental, and economic risk factors, directly impacting the mental health and psychosocial wellbeing of many communities, warns a new policy brief from the World Health Organization which recommends key approaches to address the growing impact.

UNCCD | Global Land Outlook

27 April 2022

The way land resources – soil, water, and biodiversity – are currently mismanaged and misused threatens the health and continued survival of many species on Earth, including our own, warns a stark new report from the UN Convention to Combat Desertification.

UNDRR | Our World at Risk

26 April 2022

COVID-19 and climate change are rapidly making it clear that, in today’s crowded and interconnected world, disaster impacts increasingly cascade across geographies and sectors. Despite progress, risk creation is outstripping risk reduction, warns the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction’s latest report.

WMO | State of the Climate in Latin America and the Caribbean 2020

16 August 2021

This is the first report of its kind for Latin America and the Caribbean and it shows that the region is facing increasing temperatures, glaciers retreat, sea-level rise, ocean acidification, coral reefs bleaching, land and marine heatwaves, intense tropical cyclones, floods, droughts, and wildfires. The impacts to most vulnerable communities, including the Small Islands Develop States, have been substantial and exacerbated by the COVID-19 outbreak. The report emphasizes the need to enhance climate resilience through identified pathways, such as ecosystem-based responses, as well as strengthened climate services and multi-hazard early warning systems.

WMO | State of the Climate in South-West Pacific 2020

10 November 2021

This report provides informed climate analysis and climate change trends for states and territories across the vast South-West Pacific Ocean, the adjacent oceanic areas north of the equator and the eastern parts of the Indian Ocean. The first report of its kind, it highlights the real and potential risks associated with the changes occurring in ocean circulation, temperature, acidification and deoxygenation, as well as rising sea-level. Climate and extreme weather events had major and diverse impacts on population movements and on the vulnerability of people already on the move in the region throughout 2020. Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted socio-economic development in the region, affecting key drivers of growth and revealing gaps in countries’ capacities for addressing systemic and cascading risk. Addressing the rising climate risks and associated impacts requires local, regional and transnational capacity building, development of climate services and integrated disaster risk reduction approaches.

UNEP| The Adaptation Gap Report 2021: The Gathering Storm

1 November 2021

A new report calls for urgent efforts to increase the financing and implementation of actions to adapt to the growing impacts of climate change. While policies and planning are increasing for climate change adaptation, financing and implementation are still far behind. Moreover, countries have largely missed the opportunity to use the pandemic recovery to prioritize green economic growth and adapt to climate impacts such as droughts, storms and wildfire. The report finds that the costs of adaptation are likely in the higher end of an estimated $140-300 billion per year by 2030 and $280-500 billion per year by 2050 for developing countries only. Estimated adaptation costs in developing countries are five to 10 times greater than current public adaptation finance flows, and the gap is widening.

UNDP| Showing Promise: The State of Climate Ambition

21 October 2021

The Paris Agreement’s “ratchet mechanism”, where countries regularly recalibrate and increase the ambition of climate goals, is working according to this report. But small island developing States and least developed countries are leading the way on greater ambition despite contributing only a marginal share of global emissions. The report stresses that it is time for the G20 countries to step up given that they emit the most. In reviewing the most recent national climate action plans, known as nationally determined contributions, the report finds that they are higher quality, more inclusive and country driven than in an earlier round. But finance remains a key hurdle. While countries are increasingly engaging the private sector as critical to scaled up climate action, they are not adequately defining needs in just transition processes. Issues related to gender equality and youth feature more prominently yet more needs to be done to capitalize on the potential of these groups as climate actors and leaders.

WMO and others | The State of the Climate in Asia 2020

26 October 2021

Extreme weather and climate change impacts across Asia in 2020 caused the loss of life of thousands of people, displaced millions of others and cost hundreds of billions of dollars, while wreaking a heavy toll on infrastructure and ecosystems. Sustainable development is threatened, with food and water insecurity, health risks and environmental degradation on the rise. A new report provides an overview of land and ocean temperatures, precipitation, glacier retreat, shrinking sea ice, sea level rise and severe weather. It examines socioeconomic impacts in a year when the region was also struggling with the COVID-19 pandemic, which in turn complicated disaster management. The report shows how every part of Asia was affected, from Himalayan peaks to low-lying coastal areas, from densely populated cities to deserts and from the Arctic to the Arabian seas.

UNEP | Emissions Gap Report 2021: The Heat Is On

New and updated climate commitments fall far short of Paris Agreement goals, leaving the world on track for a global temperature rise of at least 2.7°C this century. The latest Emissions Gap Report finds that updated national commitments for reducing emissions by 2030 only shave an additional 7.5 per cent off predicted annual totals. Reductions of 55 per cent are needed to stay on course in keeping global temperature rise to 1.5°C. Net-zero pledges could make a big difference if fully implemented, restraining predicted global temperature rise to 2.2°C. This provides hope that further action could still head off the most catastrophic impacts of climate change. But net-zero pledges are vague and incomplete in many cases. To stay at no more than 1.5°C, the world has eight years to take an additional 28 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent off annual emissions, above what has already been promised. Current annual emissions are close to 60 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent.

UNFCCC | Nationally Determined Contributions Under the Paris Agreement: Revised Note by the Secretariat

An updated synthesis of climate action plans communicated in Nationally Determined Contributions confirms overall trends identified in a full report released in September 2021. The update provides the last information to inform global climate talks at COP26. It synthesizes information from the 165 latest available NDCs, representing all 192 Parties to the Paris Agreement, including the 116 new or updated NDCs communicated by 143 Parties on 12 October 2021. For these 143 Parties, total emissions are estimated to be about 9 per cent below the 2010 level by 2030. Some 71 Parties communicated a carbon neutrality goal around mid-century, with their emissions levels up to 88 per cent lower in 2050 than in 2019. For all available NDCs of all 192 Parties, however, a sizable increase of about 16 per cent in global emissions is expected by 2030 compared to 2010. This may lead to a temperature rise of about 2.7°C by the end of the century.

UNEP and others | 2021 Production Gap Report

20 October 2021

The 2021 Production Gap Report finds that despite increased climate ambitions and net-zero commitments, governments plan to produce more than double the amount of fossil fuels in 2030 than what would be consistent with limiting global warming to 1.5°C. Over the next two decades, governments are collectively projecting an increase in global oil and gas production, and only a modest decrease in coal production. Taken together, plans and projections see global, total fossil fuel production rising to at least 2040. The report provides country profiles for 15 major producer countries, where most governments continue to provide significant policy support for fossil fuel production. They include Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Norway, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States. Recent scientific evidence clearly confirms that unless global coal, oil, and gas production start declining immediately and steeply, warming will exceed 1.5°C and result in catastrophic consequences 

WHO | Special Report on Climate Change and Health

11 October 2021

The Special Report on Climate Change and Health spells out the global health community’s prescription for climate action based on growing research that establishes inseparable links between climate and health. The report was launched with an open letter signed by over two thirds of the global health workforce – 300 organizations representing at least 45 million doctors and health professionals worldwide. They call on national leaders and climate talks to step up climate action. Unprecedented extreme weather events and other climate impacts are taking a rising toll on people’s lives and health. Increasingly frequent heatwaves, storms and floods kill thousands and disrupt millions of lives, while threatening health-care systems and facilities when they are needed most. Changes in weather and climate also undercut food security and drive up food-, water- and vector-borne diseases, such as malaria. Climate impacts are also negatively affecting mental health. 

WMO | 2021 State of Climate Services: Water

5 October 2021

A new report urges the world to wake up to the looming water crisis. Water-related hazards like floods and droughts are increasing because of climate change. The number of people suffering water stress is expected to soar, exacerbated by population increases and dwindling availability. But management, monitoring, forecasting and early warnings are fragmented and inadequate, while global climate finance efforts are insufficient. The State of Climate Services 2021: Water highlights the need for urgent action to improve cooperative water management, embrace integrated water and climate policies, and scale up investment in this precious commodity. It underpins all international goals on sustainable development, climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction.

WMO | Climate Indicators and Sustainable Development: Demonstrating the Interconnections

22 September 2021

Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 largely depends on addressing human-induced climate change. A new report demonstrates connections between global climate and the goals. It champions the need for greater international collaboration to both achieve the SDGs and limit global warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius. A story map highlights seven climate indicators with impacts across the global goals: carbon dioxide concentration, temperature, ocean acidification, ocean heat content, sea-ice extent, glacier mass balance and sea-level rise. The report examines the implications of the latest data and scientific research on the state of the global climate for sustainable development, highlighting how the climate is already changing in ways that may impede progress on the SDGs.

UNFCCC | Nationally determined contributions under the Paris Agreement

17 September 2021

A synthesis of nationally determined contributions required under the Paris Agreement indicates that while there is a clear trend in reducing greenhouse gas emissions over time, nations must urgently redouble climate efforts to prevent global temperature from crossing a dangerous threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius. The report includes information from all 191 Parties to the Paris Agreement based on their latest NDCs, including 86 updated or new NDCs submitted by 113 Parties. The new or updated NDCs cover about 49 per cent of global emissions. For the 113 Parties, greenhouse gas emissions are projected to decrease by 12% in 2030 compared to 2010. This is an important step towards the 45 per cent reduction in 2030 required to keep to the 1.5 degree goal. NDCs of all 191 Parties, however, imply a sizable 16 per cent increase in global emissions in 2030. Without immediate action, this could lead to a temperature rise of about 2.7 degrees Celsius by the end of the century.

WMO | Atlas of Mortality and Economic Losses from Weather, Climate and Water Extremes (1970 - 2019)

31 August 2021

A comprehensive new report finds that a disaster related to a weather, climate or water hazard occurred every day on average over the past 50 years, killing 115 people and causing $202 million in losses each day. The number of disasters increased by five times; economic losses rose sevenfold. But improved early warnings and disaster management reduced deaths by almost threefold. Cumulatively, more than 11,000 disasters were reported, with just over 2 million deaths and $3.64 trillion in losses. Weather, climate and water hazards accounted for 50 per cent of these disasters and nearly half of deaths, 91 per cent of which occurred in developing countries. Of the top 10 disasters, the largest human losses came from droughts, storms, floods and extreme temperature. Storms and floods generated the greatest economic costs. Three storms in 2017 alone accounted for a third of total economic losses from the top 10 disasters over the 50-year period.

UNICEF | The Climate Crisis Is a Child Rights Crisis

20 August 2021

At least 1 billion children live in 33 countries that are at extremely high risk from multiple climate and environmental shocks, according to the new Children’s Climate Risk Index. It offers the first comprehensive analysis of climate risk from a child’s perspective. The index ranks countries based on children’s exposure to shocks such as cyclones and heatwaves. It also considers children's vulnerability from gaps in essential services such as for education and health care. While nearly every child in the world is at risk from at least one climate or environmental hazard, the worst affected countries face multiple and often overlapping shocks that threaten to erode development progress and deepen child deprivation.

WMO | Hydromet Gap Report 2021

8 July 2021

Each year, the world could save an estimated 23,000 lives and gain $162 billion in benefits from improving weather forecasts, early warning systems and climate information, known as hydromet. That’s the conclusion of the first Hydromet Gap Report. It shows how far the world has to go to tap the benefits of effective weather and climate services, but also highlights how investments in multi-hazard early warning systems create benefits worth at least 10 times their costs. These are vital to build resilience to extreme weather, yet only 40 percent of countries currently have effective warning systems in place. Large gaps remain in vital data upon which these services depend, particularly in the least developed countries and small island developing States.

IRENA | World Energy Transitions Outlook

30 June 2021

Accelerating energy transitions in line with a livable climate could double the number of energy jobs, up to 122 million by 2050, according to a new report. It also finds a substantial boost to the global economy of 2.4 per cent over the expected growth of current plans within the next decade. The report predicts that renewables-based energy systems will instigate profound changes that will reverberate across economies and societies. Sharp adjustments in capital flows and a reorientation of investments are necessary to align energy with a positive economic and environmental trajectory. Forward-looking policies can accelerate transition, mitigate uncertainties, and ensure maximum benefits of energy transition. The annual investment of USD 4.4 trillion needed on average is high but feasible.

United Nations | Special Report on Drought 2021

17 June 2021

Drought affects millions of people, especially the most vulnerable. The impacts reach across societies, ecosystems and economies. With climate change increasing temperatures and disrupting rainfall, drought frequency, severity and duration are on the rise many regions. This requires urgent action to better manage risks and reduce devastating tolls on human lives and livelihoods. The Special Report on Drought 2021 empha¬sizes solutions in managing drought risks and calls for a sharper focus on prevention by addressing root drivers of drought and socioecological vulnerability. It stresses that risk prevention and mitigation have a far lower cost than reaction and response, and offers recommendations on how to achieve drought resilience.

REN21 | Renewables 2021 Global Status Report

15 June 2021

2020 could have been a gamechanger. With economies worldwide ravaged by COVID-19, primary energy demand fell by 4 per cent. Yet G20 countries, the planet’s biggest polluters, barely met or even missed their unambitious renewable energy targets. The Renewables 2021 Global Status Report shows that the world is nowhere near the necessary paradigm shift towards a clean, healthier and more equitable energy future, even as the benefits of renewables are indisputable. In many regions, it is now cheaper to build new wind or solar PV plants than to operate existing coal-fired power plants. The report suggests accelerating the uptake of renewable energy by making it a key performance indicator for every economic activity, budget and public purchase, and adopting clear targets and plans to shift to renewable energy and end fossil fuel use.

CDB and the UN Global Compact | Taking the Temperature

10 June 2021

New research finds that the G7 stock indexes are not currently on a 2°C pathway, much less the 1.5°C one that is so urgently needed. Fossil fuels are a key contributor to the emissions of all seven. Taking the Temperature: Assessing and scaling-up climate ambition in the G7 business sector also finds that indexes with a higher share of emissions covered by science-based targets for reductions result in lower overall temperature ratings. Companies with such targets are already cutting emissions at scale, and despite the findings, momentum for climate action in G7 countries is growing. Overall, 2020 was a milestone year for climate commitments, with the annual rate of adoption of science-based targets doubling compared to 2015-2019. The report maps four key levers that governments, investors and businesses can use to unlock breakthrough climate action through such targets.

IEA and others | Tracking SDG 7: The Energy Progress Report 2021

6 June 2021

More people have access to electricity than ever before but unless efforts are scaled up significantly in countries with the largest deficits, the world will still fall short of ensuring universal access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy by 2030 in line with the Sustainable Development Goals. While more than 1 billion people gained access to electricity globally over the last decade, COVID-19’s financial impact has made basic electricity services unaffordable for 30 million more people, the majority in Africa. Under current and planned policies, and given fallout from the pandemic, an estimated 660 million people would still lack access in 2030. The report examines how to bridge the gaps, such as by significantly scaling up renewable energy. It tracks international public financial flows to developing countries, finding these reached $14 billion for clean and renewable energy in 2018. But only 20 percent went to the least-developed countries, which are furthest from achieving SDG energy targets.

Climate and Clean Air Coalition and UNEP | Global Methane Assessment

The 2021 Global Methane Assessment shows that human-caused methane emissions can be reduced by up to 45 per cent this decade, avoiding nearly 0.3°C of global warming by 2045. Because methane is a key ingredient in ground-level ozone (smog), a powerful climate forcer and dangerous air pollutant, a 45 per cent reduction would prevent 260,000 premature deaths, 775,000 asthma-related hospital visits, 73 billion hours of lost labour from extreme heat and 25 million tonnes of crop losses annually. Most human-caused methane emissions come from three sectors: fossil fuels, waste and agriculture. The assessment identifies readily available solutions to reduce methane emissions. Half are not only low in cost, but would even make money, such as through reducing leaks in the oil and gas industry.

REN21 | Renewables in Cities 2021 Global Status Report

18 March 2021

Cities around the world are accelerating uptake of renewable energy, adopting targets and policies to spur local consumption and generation. This makes a critical contribution to climate action, since cities shelter more than half the global population and use three-quarters of global final energy consumption. REN21’s Renewables in Cities Global Status Report surveys the status and prospects of renewable energy in cities, detailing policies, markets, investments and citizen actions. It puts particular focus on renewables in public, residential and commercial buildings as well as public and private transport. Covering urban areas from towns to mega-cities, the report builds on more than 330 data contributors, and is endorsed by major renewable energy players and city networks.

UNEP and others | Are We Building Back Better?

10 March 2021

One year into the pandemic, recovery spending has fallen fall short of national commitments to shift to more sustainable investments. A new report finds only 18 per cent of announced recovery spending in 50 leading economies can be considered “green”. That totals about $368 billion of $14.4 trillion in COVID-induced spending on rescue and recovery in 2020. The report calls for governments to invest more sustainably, emphasizing that green recovery can bring stronger economic growth, while helping to meet global environmental targets and addressing structural inequality. To keep decades of progress against poverty from unwinding, low-income countries will require substantial concessional finance from international partners.

UNEP | Food Waste Index Report 2021

4 March 2021

People waste a substantial share of food, which is associated with up to 10 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Until now, the true scale of food waste and its impacts have not been well understood. Efforts to reduce it have been minimal, despite a global Sustainable Development Goal commitment to halving per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer levels. The Food Waste Index Report generates a new estimate of global food waste, and offers a methodology for countries to measure the problem and track national progress on reducing it.

UNFCCC | Initial NDC Synthesis Report

3 March 2021

The Initial NDC Synthesis Report shows nations must redouble efforts and submit stronger, more ambitious national climate action plans in 2021. That will be the only way to achieve the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global temperature rise ideally by no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius. The report looks at 75 new or updated action plans – known as NDCs – covering around 30 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Together, they would cut emissions by less than 1 per cent by 2030 compared to 2010 levels. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has indicated that emissions should be around 45 per cent lower.

Science Based Targets | Progress Report

6 January 2021

From Ambition to Impact: How companies are reducing emissions at scale with science-based targets is the first study to look at how setting science-based targets correlates with actually reducing corporate emissions. The study surveyed 338 companies with such targets, finding they have slashed combined emissions by 25 per cent since 2015. Annual emissions declined at a rate exceeding the one required to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Further, 2020 saw a milestone: the doubling of science-based climate commitments.

UNEP| Global Climate Litigation Report: 2020 Status Review

26 January 2021

The report provides an overview of the current state of climate change litigation globally, finding a rapid increase around the world. In 2017, 884 cases were brought in 24 countries. By July 2020, the number of cases had nearly doubled with at least 1,550 filed in 38 countries. The report shows how climate litigation is compelling governments and corporate actors to purse more ambitious climate change mitigation and adaptation goals. It looks at the role of fundamental human rights connected to a safe climate, and outlines how cases are forcing greater climate disclosures and ending “corporate greenwashing”.

UNEP| Adaptation Gap Report 2020

14 January 2021

The UNEP Adaptation Gap Report 2020 looks at progress in planning for, financing and implementing adaptation, with a focus on nature-based solutions. It finds some advances in planning, but also huge gaps in finance for developing countries. Implementation of adaptation projects lags behind, with many not yet delivering real protection against climate impacts such as droughts, floods and sea-level rise. The report calls for closing the gaps fast, and prioritizing nature-based solutions, or locally appropriate actions offering benefits to people and nature.

UNEP | Emissions Gap Report 2020

9 December 2020

Go green with pandemic recovery packages. That’s the message of the 2020 Emissions Gap Report. It predicts that green recovery could shave emissions by 25 per cent by 2030, bringing the world closer to Paris Agreement goals to limit global warming. Despite a recent dip in emissions from lockdowns and slowing economies, temperatures are still rising at a record clip.

2 December 2020

The world must cut fossil fuel production by 6 per cent per year to avoid the worst of global warming. Instead, countries are projecting an average annual increase of 2 per cent. Those are among the sobering findings of the latest Production Gap Report, issued by leading research organizations and the United Nations. The report urges making COVID-19 recovery a turning point, where countries should steer investments into changing course to avoid “locking in” dependence on polluting coal, oil and gas.

UN | Report of the Secretary-General on the 2019 Climate Action Summit

11 December 2020

September’s Climate Action Summit delivered important new actions, a surge in climate momentum, and a clear destination: 45% emissions cuts by 2030 on the way to a carbon neutral world by 2050. The Secretary-General’s report on the outcomes of the Summit highlights the way forward in 2020, and outlines ten priority areas of action.

UNEP | Emissions Gap Report 2019

26 November 2019

As the world strives to cut greenhouse gas emissions and limit climate change, it is crucial to track progress towards globally agreed climate goals. For a decade, UNEP’s Emissions Gap Report has compared where greenhouse gas emissions are heading against where they need to be, and highlighted the best ways to close the gap.

UNDP | Global Outlook Report

18 September 2019

The UN Development Programme (UNDP) and UN Climate Change (UNFCCC) have been working together since 2014 to support countries in developing their national climate plans --Nationally Determined Contributions for the Paris Agreement or NDCs. This report is the most detailed review yet of momentum since the Paris Agreement and is designed to both inspire and inform the UN Climate Action Summit in New York on 23 September.

IPCC | Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate

24 September 2019

The IPCC Special Report highlights the urgency of prioritizing timely, ambitious and coordinated action to address unprecedented and enduring changes in the ocean and cryosphere. Without a radical change in human behavior, hundreds of millions of people could suffer from rising sea levels, frequent natural disasters and food shortages, it warns.

The Special Report provides new evidence for the benefits of limiting global warming to the lowest possible level – in line with the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement. It also finds that strongly reducing greenhouse gas emissions, protecting and restoring ecosystems, and carefully managing the use of natural resources would make it possible to preserve the ocean and cryosphere.

UNFCCC | Climate Action and Support Trends 2019

9 August 2019

The report “Climate Action and Support Trends” was prepared as UN Climate Change input to the UN Climate Action Summit, and it puts a spotlight on the progress made over the past 25 years since the inception of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). This can help in scaling up further action, as governments prepare to submit the next round of national climate action plans, known as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), by 2020.

IPCC | Climate Change and Land

8 August 2019

Land is already under growing human pressure and climate change is adding to these pressures. At the same time, keeping global warming to well below 2ºC can be achieved only by reducing greenhouse gas emissions from all sectors including land and food, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states in its latest report.

The report provides key scientific input into forthcoming climate and environment negotiations, such as the Conference of the Parties of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (COP14) in New Delhi, India in September and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference (COP25) in Santiago, Chile, in December.

UNEP | Emissions Gap Report 2018

10 January 2019

The flagship report from UN Environment is the definitive assessment of the 'emissions gap' – the gap between anticipated emission levels in 2030, compared to levels consistent with a 2°C / 1.5°C target. It found that global emissions are on the rise as national commitments to combat climate change come up short. But surging momentum from the private sector and untapped potential from innovation and green-financing offer pathways to bridge the emissions gap.

The New Climate Economy

The next 2-3 years are a critical window when many of the policy and investment decisions that shape the next 10-15 years will be taken. The New Climate Economy report found that leaders are already seizing the exciting economic and market opportunities of the new growth approach, while the laggards are not only missing out on these opportunities but are also putting us all at greater risk. More than US$26 trillion and a more sustainable planet are on offer, if everyone gets on board.

CMS | State of the World’s Migratory Species Report

12 February 2024

The first-ever State of the World’s Migratory Species report was launched by the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS). The report provides a global overview of the conservation status and population trends of migratory animals, combined with the latest information on their main threats and successful actions to save them. The findings underscore the need for greater action for all migratory species. It also shows that population and species-wide recoveries are possible, highlighting instances of successful policy change and positive action.

UNCCD | Global drought snapshot 2023

According to the report, ‘Global Drought Snapshot,’ launched by the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), few if any hazard claims more lives, causes more economic loss and affects more sectors of societies than drought. The numbers presented in the publication speak volumes about the urgency of addressing this issue and highlight land restoration, sustainable land management and nature positive agricultural practices as critical aspects of building global drought resilience.

UNCCD | Drought in Numbers

Throughout the world, people are feeling the impacts of the climate and environmental crises most strongly through water: the land is drying up, fertile grounds are turning to dust and drought is prevailing. Since 1970, weather, climate and water hazards accounted for 50 percent of all disasters and 45 percent of all reported deaths. The UN Convention to Combat Desertification’s Drought in Numbers report looks at worrying trends in the duration and intensity of droughts and the devastating impact on ecological systems and human survival.

UNEP | Frontiers Report

17 February 2022

The Frontiers Report warns of intensifying environmental issues, including wildfires, urban noise pollution and phenological mismatches, that require greater attention.

UN WATER | The United Nations World Water Development Report

2 March 2022

A new report from UN Water looks at how groundwater is central to the fight against poverty, food and water security, the creation of decent jobs, socio-economic development, and the resilience of societies and economies to climate change. The report also describes the challenges and opportunities associated with the development, management, and governance of groundwater across the world.

GCRMN/ICRI | The Sixth Status of Corals of the World: 2020 Report

Coral reefs support at least 25 per cent of marine species and underpin the safety, coastal protection, well-being, food and economic security of hundreds of millions of people. They provide goods and services valued at $2.7 trillion per year. But coral reefs are among the most vulnerable ecosystems to global threats from climate change and ocean acidification, and local impacts from land-based pollution such as input of nutrients and sediments from agriculture, marine pollution, and overfishing and destructive fishing practices. The Status of Coral Reefs of the World report describes the status and trends of coral reefs. The sixth edition is the first based on the quantitative analysis of a global dataset spanning more than 40 years and comprising almost 2 million observations from more than 12,000 sites around the world.

World Bank | The Economic Case for Nature

A new World Bank report estimates that the collapse of select ecosystem services provided by nature – such as wild pollination, provision of food from marine fisheries and timber from native forests – could result in a decline in global gross domestic product (GDP) of $2.7 trillion annually by 2030. The report underscores the strong reliance of economies on nature, particularly in low-income countries. It highlights that sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia would suffer the greatest GDP contractions at 9.7 per cent and 6.5 per cent annually, respectively. This is due to a reliance on pollinated crops and, in sub-Saharan Africa, on forest products, as well as a limited ability to switch to other production and consumption options that would be less affected.

IPBES and IPCC | Biodiversity and Climate Change

9 June 2021

Unprecedented changes in climate and biodiversity, driven by human activities, have combined and increasingly threaten nature, human lives, livelihoods and well-being around the world. Biodiversity loss and climate change are both driven by human economic activities and mutually reinforce each other. A report by 50 of the world’s leading biodiversity and climate experts summarizes findings from the first-ever collaboration between the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Biodiversity and Climate Change finds that previous policies have largely tackled biodiversity loss and climate change independently of each other, but neither will be successfully resolved unless both are tackled together. Doing so while also considering social impacts offers opportunities to maximize benefits and meet global development goals.

UNEP | Making Peace with Nature

18 February 2021

Making Peace with Nature lays out the gravity of the Earth’s triple environmental emergencies – climate, biodiversity loss and pollution – through a unique synthesis of findings from major global assessments. It flags interlinkages between environmental and development challenges and describes the roles of all parts of society in the transformations needed for a sustainable future. Advances in science and bold policymaking can open pathways towards the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 and a carbon neutral world by 2050, while bending the curve on biodiversity loss and curbing pollution and waste. Taking that path means innovation and investment only in activities that protect both people and nature; COVID-19 recovery plans are an unmissable opportunity to do so.

CBD | The Global Biodiversity Outlook 5 Report

18 August 2020

Despite encouraging progress in several areas, the natural world is suffering badly and getting worse. The Global Biodiversity Outlook 5 (GBO-5) calls for a shift away from “business as usual” across a range of human activities. The report outlines eight transitions that recognize the value of biodiversity, the need to restore the ecosystems on which all human activity de-pends, and the urgency of reducing the negative impacts of such activity. It also shows that governments will need to scale up national ambitions in support of the new Global Biodiversity Framework and ensure that all necessary resources are mobilized, and the enabling environment strengthened.

UNEP | Global Environment Outlook

4 March 2019

UN Environment’s sixth Global Environment Outlook (2019) calls on decision makers to take immediate action to address pressing environmental issues to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals as well as other Internationally Agreed Environment Goals, such as the Paris Agreement.

By bringing together a community of hundreds of scientists, peer reviewers and collaborating institutions and partners, the GEO reports build on sound scientific knowledge to provide governments, local authorities, businesses and individual citizens with the information needed to guide societies to a truly sustainable world by 2050.

2024 Financing for Sustainable Development Report

9 January 2024

Financing challenges are at the heart of the current sustainable development crisis. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, increasing geopolitical tensions and intensifying climate shocks, financing gaps are widening. Only a massive surge of financing, and a reform of the international financial architecture can rescue the SDGs.

DESA | World Economic Situation and Prospects 2024

4 January 2024

The UN’s 2024 World Economic Situation and Prospects report projects a slowdown in global growth from an estimated 2.7 per cent in 2023 to 2.4 per cent in 2024. According to the report, although there was stronger-than-expected GDP growth in 2023, high interest rates, further escalation of conflicts, sluggish international trade, and increasing extreme weather and climate-related disasters, pose significant challenges to global growth and jeopardize progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

UNEP | State of Finance for Nature

9 December 2023

Close to $7 trillion is invested globally each year in activities that have a direct negative impact on nature from both public and private sector sources - equivalent to roughly 7 per cent of GDP - according to the latest State of Finance for Nature report released by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and partners. The report finds that in 2022, investments in nature-based solutions totaled approximately $200 billion, but finance flows to activities directly harming nature were more than 30 times larger. It exposes a concerning disparity between the volumes of finance to nature-based solutions and nature-negative finance flows, and underscores the urgency to address the interconnected crises of climate change, biodiversity loss, and land degradation. The report suggests that simply doubling or tripling investment in nature-based solutions will not be sufficient to reach the three Rio targets unless the almost $7 trillion finance flows to nature-negative practices are dramatically reduced and ideally repurposed in favor of nature.

UNEP | The 2022 State of Finance for Nature report

1 December 2022

The State of Finance for Nature report underpins that with sufficient finance, nature-based solutions provide benefits that contribute to climate, biodiversity and land restoration goals in an integrated manner while also promoting human wellbeing. This “triple” win potential is particularly alluring given the current global economic situation. Yet, nature-based solutions are significantly underfinanced, revealed the report.

UNEP | The State of Finance for Nature in the G20 report

26 January 2022

G20 country investments in nature-based solutions need to reach US$285 billion a year by 2050 to address the interrelated climate, biodiversity, and land degradation crises. However, current G20 spending is only USD 120 billion/year. The new report also reveals that the spending gap in non-G20 countries is larger and more difficult to bridge, but only 2 per cent of the G20’s US$120 billion investment was directed towards official development assistance in 2020. Similarly, private sector investments remain small, at US$14 billion a year.

IEA and others | Financing Clean Energy Transitions

Our energy and climate future increasingly hinges on decisions made in emerging market and developing economies, which face the challenge of meeting the aspirations of their citizens while avoiding high-carbon pathways. These economies are set to account for the largest emissions growth in coming decades unless sufficient action is taken to transform their energy systems. Yet efforts to support clean energy in them are faltering. The COVID-19 pandemic has stemmed the flow of new investments and exacerbated imbalances in access to capital. Countries will miss an opportunity to “build back better” unless the flow of new clean energy projects increases dramatically. Financing Clean Energy Transitions in Emerging and Developing Economies analyses the outlook for investment, assesses key issues in attracting finance, and provides advice on how policy reforms and financial mechanisms can mobilize and align private finance.

Delivering on the $100 Billion Climate Finance Commitment and Transforming Climate Finance

Meeting the pledge by developed countries to mobilize at least US$100 billion a year to support developing countries in mitigating and adapting to climate change, lagging even before the COVID-19 pandemic, requires urgent action, according to a new report by independent experts released today by the United Nations.

UNEP FI | Collective Commitment to Climate Action

8 December 2020

A new report outlines how 38 major banks from six continents are putting their portfolios and business practices behind the Collective Commitment to Climate Action. The initiative mobilizes banks to join the transition to a net-zero economy. Members are applying climate science and adopting policies to exclude financing activities that worsen global warming.

UNEP | Greening the Blue

21 December 2023

The Greening the Blue report details the UN System's environmental footprint and efforts to reduce it. This edition covers data for 2022, focusing on the environmental impacts of over 308,000 personnel at Headquarters, in thousands of field offices and in operations on the ground. It analyzes data on greenhouse gas emissions, waste, air pollution, water, and biodiversity, as well as on environmental governance, procurement, and human resources.

14 December 2022

The 2022 edition of the Report reveals the UN system accelerated efforts on environmental governance and environmental training in 2021. It highlights the 2021 environmental impacts of 307,000 personnel in 53 reporting entities across Headquarters, field offices and operations on the ground. It is composed of the 2021 data highlights, which are based on UN system-wide results, as well as more dynamic individual entity information that is provided by the Report’s data tables and entity-specific webpages.

UNEP | Enabling Sustainable Lifestyles in a Climate Emergency

This Policy Brief by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) offers insights on what forces shape our lifestyles and sets out guidelines on how to remove carbon-intensive consumption options and how to integrate or scale up low-carbon alternatives, while offering fairer access for all and putting the sustainable lifestyles approach on the agenda of regional, national and local policymakers.

8 November 2021

The 2021 edition of Greening the Blue is the first to reveal impacts from COVID-19 on the UN system’s environmental footprint. The report provides UN system-wide and entity-level data on environmental impacts related to greenhouse gas emissions, climate neutrality, waste, air pollution, water and wastewater, and biodiversity. It found that the UN system in 2020 generated approximately 25 per cent fewer greenhouse gas emissions than in 2019, given significant worldwide travel restrictions and many UN personnel working from home. In 2020, 19 per cent of UN electricity worldwide came from renewable energy. The UN system was able to offset 99 per cent of emissions. While offsetting is important in managing unavoidable emissions, the priority for the UN system remains emissions reductions and elimination.

10 December 2020

The United Nations has released its latest annual stocktaking on its environmental impact. Greening the Blue 2020 finds a downward trend in emissions for nearly 60 UN system entities and 310,000 staff members. It also highlights advances in environmental management.

Facts and figures

• What is climate change?
• Causes and effects
• Myth busters

Cutting emissions

• Explaining net zero
• High-level expert group on net zero
• Checklists for credibility of net-zero pledges
• Greenwashing
• What you can do

Clean energy

• Renewable energy – key to a safer future
• What is renewable energy
• Five ways to speed up the energy transition
• Why invest in renewable energy
• Clean energy stories
• A just transition

Adapting to climate change

• Climate adaptation
• Early warnings for all
• Youth voices

Financing climate action

• Finance and justice
• Loss and damage
• $100 billion commitment
• Why finance climate action
• Biodiversity
• Human Security

International cooperation

• What are Nationally Determined Contributions
• Acceleration Agenda
• Climate Ambition Summit
• Climate conferences (COPs)
• Youth Advisory Group
• Action initiatives
• Secretary-General’s speeches
• Press material
• Fact sheets
• Communications tips

The Effects of Climate Change

The effects of human-caused global warming are happening now, are irreversible for people alive today, and will worsen as long as humans add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.

• We already see effects scientists predicted, such as the loss of sea ice, melting glaciers and ice sheets, sea level rise, and more intense heat waves.
• Scientists predict global temperature increases from human-made greenhouse gases will continue. Severe weather damage will also increase and intensify.

Earth Will Continue to Warm and the Effects Will Be Profound

Global climate change is not a future problem. Changes to Earth’s climate driven by increased human emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases are already having widespread effects on the environment: glaciers and ice sheets are shrinking, river and lake ice is breaking up earlier, plant and animal geographic ranges are shifting, and plants and trees are blooming sooner.

Effects that scientists had long predicted would result from global climate change are now occurring, such as sea ice loss, accelerated sea level rise, and longer, more intense heat waves.

The magnitude and rate of climate change and associated risks depend strongly on near-term mitigation and adaptation actions, and projected adverse impacts and related losses and damages escalate with every increment of global warming.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

Some changes (such as droughts, wildfires, and extreme rainfall) are happening faster than scientists previously assessed. In fact, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — the United Nations body established to assess the science related to climate change — modern humans have never before seen the observed changes in our global climate, and some of these changes are irreversible over the next hundreds to thousands of years.

Scientists have high confidence that global temperatures will continue to rise for many decades, mainly due to greenhouse gases produced by human activities.

The IPCC’s Sixth Assessment report, published in 2021, found that human emissions of heat-trapping gases have already warmed the climate by nearly 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.1 degrees Celsius) since 1850-1900. 1 The global average temperature is expected to reach or exceed 1.5 degrees C (about 3 degrees F) within the next few decades. These changes will affect all regions of Earth.

The severity of effects caused by climate change will depend on the path of future human activities. More greenhouse gas emissions will lead to more climate extremes and widespread damaging effects across our planet. However, those future effects depend on the total amount of carbon dioxide we emit. So, if we can reduce emissions, we may avoid some of the worst effects.

The scientific evidence is unequivocal: climate change is a threat to human wellbeing and the health of the planet. Any further delay in concerted global action will miss the brief, rapidly closing window to secure a liveable future.

Here are some of the expected effects of global climate change on the United States, according to the Third and Fourth National Climate Assessment Reports:

Future effects of global climate change in the United States:

U.S. Sea Level Likely to Rise 1 to 6.6 Feet by 2100

Global sea level has risen about 8 inches (0.2 meters) since reliable record-keeping began in 1880. By 2100, scientists project that it will rise at least another foot (0.3 meters), but possibly as high as 6.6 feet (2 meters) in a high-emissions scenario. Sea level is rising because of added water from melting land ice and the expansion of seawater as it warms. Image credit: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0

Climate Changes Will Continue Through This Century and Beyond

Global climate is projected to continue warming over this century and beyond. Image credit: Khagani Hasanov, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0

Hurricanes Will Become Stronger and More Intense

Scientists project that hurricane-associated storm intensity and rainfall rates will increase as the climate continues to warm. Image credit: NASA

More Droughts and Heat Waves

Droughts in the Southwest and heat waves (periods of abnormally hot weather lasting days to weeks) are projected to become more intense, and cold waves less intense and less frequent. Image credit: NOAA

Longer Wildfire Season

Warming temperatures have extended and intensified wildfire season in the West, where long-term drought in the region has heightened the risk of fires. Scientists estimate that human-caused climate change has already doubled the area of forest burned in recent decades. By around 2050, the amount of land consumed by wildfires in Western states is projected to further increase by two to six times. Even in traditionally rainy regions like the Southeast, wildfires are projected to increase by about 30%.

Changes in Precipitation Patterns

Climate change is having an uneven effect on precipitation (rain and snow) in the United States, with some locations experiencing increased precipitation and flooding, while others suffer from drought. On average, more winter and spring precipitation is projected for the northern United States, and less for the Southwest, over this century. Image credit: Marvin Nauman/FEMA

Frost-Free Season (and Growing Season) will Lengthen

The length of the frost-free season, and the corresponding growing season, has been increasing since the 1980s, with the largest increases occurring in the western United States. Across the United States, the growing season is projected to continue to lengthen, which will affect ecosystems and agriculture.

Global Temperatures Will Continue to Rise

Summer of 2023 was Earth's hottest summer on record, 0.41 degrees Fahrenheit (F) (0.23 degrees Celsius (C)) warmer than any other summer in NASA’s record and 2.1 degrees F (1.2 C) warmer than the average summer between 1951 and 1980. Image credit: NASA

Arctic Is Very Likely to Become Ice-Free

Sea ice cover in the Arctic Ocean is expected to continue decreasing, and the Arctic Ocean will very likely become essentially ice-free in late summer if current projections hold. This change is expected to occur before mid-century.

U.S. Regional Effects

Climate change is bringing different types of challenges to each region of the country. Some of the current and future impacts are summarized below. These findings are from the Third 3 and Fourth 4 National Climate Assessment Reports, released by the U.S. Global Change Research Program .

• Northeast. Heat waves, heavy downpours, and sea level rise pose increasing challenges to many aspects of life in the Northeast. Infrastructure, agriculture, fisheries, and ecosystems will be increasingly compromised. Farmers can explore new crop options, but these adaptations are not cost- or risk-free. Moreover, adaptive capacity , which varies throughout the region, could be overwhelmed by a changing climate. Many states and cities are beginning to incorporate climate change into their planning.
• Northwest. Changes in the timing of peak flows in rivers and streams are reducing water supplies and worsening competing demands for water. Sea level rise, erosion, flooding, risks to infrastructure, and increasing ocean acidity pose major threats. Increasing wildfire incidence and severity, heat waves, insect outbreaks, and tree diseases are causing widespread forest die-off.
• Southeast. Sea level rise poses widespread and continuing threats to the region’s economy and environment. Extreme heat will affect health, energy, agriculture, and more. Decreased water availability will have economic and environmental impacts.
• Midwest. Extreme heat, heavy downpours, and flooding will affect infrastructure, health, agriculture, forestry, transportation, air and water quality, and more. Climate change will also worsen a range of risks to the Great Lakes.
• Southwest. Climate change has caused increased heat, drought, and insect outbreaks. In turn, these changes have made wildfires more numerous and severe. The warming climate has also caused a decline in water supplies, reduced agricultural yields, and triggered heat-related health impacts in cities. In coastal areas, flooding and erosion are additional concerns.

1. IPCC 2021, Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis , the Working Group I contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.

2. IPCC, 2013: Summary for Policymakers. In: Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Stocker, T.F., D. Qin, G.-K. Plattner, M. Tignor, S.K. Allen, J. Boschung, A. Nauels, Y. Xia, V. Bex and P.M. Midgley (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA.

3. USGCRP 2014, Third Climate Assessment .

4. USGCRP 2017, Fourth Climate Assessment .

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A Degree of Difference

So, the Earth's average temperature has increased about 2 degrees Fahrenheit during the 20th century. What's the big deal?

What’s the difference between climate change and global warming?

“Global warming” refers to the long-term warming of the planet. “Climate change” encompasses global warming, but refers to the broader range of changes that are happening to our planet, including rising sea levels; shrinking mountain glaciers; accelerating ice melt in Greenland, Antarctica and the Arctic; and shifts in flower/plant blooming times.

Is it too late to prevent climate change?

Humans have caused major climate changes to happen already, and we have set in motion more changes still. However, if we stopped emitting greenhouse gases today, the rise in global temperatures would begin to flatten within a few years. Temperatures would then plateau but remain well-elevated for many, many centuries.

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UN climate report: It’s ‘now or never’ to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees

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A new flagship UN report on climate change out Monday indicating that harmful carbon emissions from 2010-2019 have never been higher in human history, is proof that the world is on a “fast track” to disaster, António Guterres has warned , with scientists arguing that it’s ‘now or never’ to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees.

Reacting to the latest findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ( IPCC ), the UN Secretary-General insisted that unless governments everywhere reassess their energy policies, the world will be uninhabitable.

#LIVE NOW the press conference to present the #IPCC’s latest #ClimateReport, #ClimateChange 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change, the Working Group III contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report. Including a Q&amp;A session with registered media. https://t.co/iIl81zXev7 IPCC IPCC_CH

His comments reflected the IPCC’s insistence that all countries must reduce their fossil fuel use substantially, extend access to electricity, improve energy efficiency and increase the use of alternative fuels, such as hydrogen.

Unless action is taken soon, some major cities will be under water, Mr. Guterres said in a video message, which also forecast “unprecedented heatwaves, terrifying storms, widespread water shortages and the extinction of a million species of plants and animals”.

Horror story

The UN chief added: “This is not fiction or exaggeration. It is what science tells us will result from our current energy policies. We are on a pathway to global warming of more than double the 1.5-degree (Celsius, or 2.7-degrees Fahreinheit) limit ” that was agreed in Paris in 2015.

Providing the scientific proof to back up that damning assessment, the IPCC report – written by hundreds of leading scientists and agreed by 195 countries - noted that greenhouse gas emissions generated by human activity, have increased since 2010 “across all major sectors globally”.

In an op-ed article penned for the Washington Post, Mr. Guterres described the latest IPCC report as "a litany of broken climate promises ", which revealed a "yawning gap between climate pledges, and reality."

He wrote that high-emitting governments and corporations, were not just turning a blind eye, "they are adding fuel to the flames by continuing to invest in climate-choking industries. Scientists warn that we are already perilously close to tipping points that could lead to cascading and irreversible climate effects."

Urban issue

An increasing share of emissions can be attributed to towns and cities , the report’s authors continued, adding just as worryingly, that emissions reductions clawed back in the last decade or so “have been less than emissions increases, from rising global activity levels in industry, energy supply, transport, agriculture and buildings”.

Striking a more positive note - and insisting that it is still possible to halve emissions by 2030 - the IPCC urged governments to ramp up action to curb emissions.

The UN body also welcomed the significant decrease in the cost of renewable energy sources since 2010, by as much as 85 per cent for solar and wind energy, and batteries.

You might also like

• ‘Lifeline’ of renewable energy can steer world out of climate crisis
• 8 reasons not to give up hope - and take climate action

Encouraging climate action

“We are at a crossroads. The decisions we make now can secure a liveable future,” said IPCC Chair Hoesung Lee. “ I am encouraged by climate action being taken in many countries . There are policies, regulations and market instruments that are proving effective. If these are scaled up and applied more widely and equitably, they can support deep emissions reductions and stimulate innovation.”

To limit global warming to around 1.5C (2.7°F), the IPCC report insisted that global greenhouse gas emissions would have to peak “before 2025 at the latest, and be reduced by 43 per cent by 2030”.

Methane would also need to be reduced by about a third, the report’s authors continued, adding that even if this was achieved, it was “almost inevitable that we will temporarily exceed this temperature threshold”, although the world “could  return to below it by the end of the century”.

Now or never

“ It’s now or never, if we want to limit global warming to 1.5°C (2.7°F); without immediate and deep emissions reductions across all sectors, it will be impossible ,” said Jim Skea, Co-Chair of IPCC Working Group III, which released the latest report.

Global temperatures will stabilise when carbon dioxide emissions reach net zero. For 1.5C (2.7F), this means achieving net zero carbon dioxide emissions globally in the early 2050s; for 2C (3.6°F), it is in the early 2070s, the IPCC report states.

“This assessment shows that limiting warming to around 2C (3.6F) still requires global greenhouse gas emissions to peak before 2025 at the latest, and be reduced by a quarter by 2030.”

Policy base

A great deal of importance is attached to IPCC assessments because they provide governments with scientific information that they can use to develop climate policies.

They also play a key role in international negotiations to tackle climate change.

Among the sustainable and emissions-busting solutions that are available to governments, the IPCC report emphasised that rethinking how cities and other urban areas function in future could help significantly in mitigating the worst effects of climate change.

“These (reductions) can be achieved through lower energy consumption (such as by creating compact, walkable cities), electrification of transport in combination with low-emission energy sources, and enhanced carbon uptake and storage using nature,” the report suggested. “There are options for established, rapidly growing and new cities,” it said.

Echoing that message, IPCC Working Group III Co-Chair, Priyadarshi Shukla, insisted that “the right policies, infrastructure and technology…to enable changes to our lifestyles and behaviour, can result in a 40 to 70 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. “The evidence also shows that these lifestyle changes can improve our health and wellbeing.”

• climate action
• Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

• Report Writing On Climate Change

Report Writing on Programme on Climate Change

In today’s world, climate change is a burning issue. Climate changes are basically changes in weather patterns and temperature mainly due to human activities leading to global warming.

It is very important that we start taking action to prevent catastrophic climate changes in the future. Scientists have warned that the temperatures in various parts of the world will rise tremendously and the water levels will rise to submerge all low-lying areas if global warming isn’t controlled.

So, when you are writing a report about climate change, it’s important that you include all the points discussed above. To help the students understand how a report on climate change is written, the article discusses two such reports. So without wasting much time, let’s go through them.

Report on Event on Climate Change in School

On 17th June 2021, DAV Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh, organised an event on climate change. The main aim of the event was to increase awareness among students about how climate change affects the world, and about the need to reverse it. Students were asked to do projects, make models or decorate the class with ‘Climate Change’ as its theme. A small rally was organised by the students in the nearby colonies to spread awareness about climate change. The Principal of the school gave a speech on what role the environment plays in climate change and why it is important that people should save the environment. Then as a part of a special drive, the Principal announced that students would be planting fifty different trees in the school park. A sit and draw competition was organised, and students were asked to draw pictures depicting different means to prevent climate change. The first three winners were given certificates and prizes. The District Magistrate was invited as the chief guest of this event who delivered a speech on how it’s important for future generations to take care of the environment and prevent further climate change. The events of the day came to an end with the Principal and the District Magistrate giving away prizes to the winners of the sit and draw competition. The projects and presentations made by the students were kept in the Art Gallery of the school for the rest of the students and teachers to visit and see it.

Report on Event on Climate Change in College

On 12th June 2021, IIT Bhubaneswar, Orissa, organised a small event on climate change. The main aim of the event was to increase awareness among students about the increasing climate change conditions and the importance of the environment in controlling it. Students were asked to prepare powerpoint presentations on how harming the environment can lead to severe climate change. The event was organised in the school auditorium where parents, as well as students, could attend it. The Principal of the college gave a speech on what role the environment plays in regulating the climate and why it is important that people should save the environment in order to stop any further climate changes. The best powerpoint presentations were given certificates and prizes. The Deputy Magistrate, the chief guest of this event, delivered a speech on how climate changes have been affecting the Earth and how icebergs are melting at a fast pace and resulting in the rise of water. She also stated how essential it was for future generations to take care of the environment and prevent any sudden climate changes. The events of the day came to an end with the Principal and the Deputy Magistrate giving away prizes to the students who made the best presentations on climate change.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is report writing.

A formal way of writing detailed accounts on any given topic based on particular information is known as report writing.

What is climate change?

Climate change refers to sudden changes in the climate due to man-made activities like global warming or different natural activities.

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ENCYCLOPEDIC ENTRY

Global warming.

The causes, effects, and complexities of global warming are important to understand so that we can fight for the health of our planet.

Earth Science, Climatology

Tennessee Power Plant

Ash spews from a coal-fueled power plant in New Johnsonville, Tennessee, United States.

Photograph by Emory Kristof/ National Geographic

Global warming is the long-term warming of the planet’s overall temperature. Though this warming trend has been going on for a long time, its pace has significantly increased in the last hundred years due to the burning of fossil fuels . As the human population has increased, so has the volume of fossil fuels burned. Fossil fuels include coal, oil, and natural gas, and burning them causes what is known as the “greenhouse effect” in Earth’s atmosphere.

The greenhouse effect is when the sun’s rays penetrate the atmosphere, but when that heat is reflected off the surface cannot escape back into space. Gases produced by the burning of fossil fuels prevent the heat from leaving the atmosphere. These greenhouse gasses are carbon dioxide , chlorofluorocarbons, water vapor , methane , and nitrous oxide . The excess heat in the atmosphere has caused the average global temperature to rise overtime, otherwise known as global warming.

Global warming has presented another issue called climate change. Sometimes these phrases are used interchangeably, however, they are different. Climate change refers to changes in weather patterns and growing seasons around the world. It also refers to sea level rise caused by the expansion of warmer seas and melting ice sheets and glaciers . Global warming causes climate change, which poses a serious threat to life on Earth in the forms of widespread flooding and extreme weather. Scientists continue to study global warming and its impact on Earth.

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The Science of Climate Change Explained: Facts, Evidence and Proof

Definitive answers to the big questions.

Credit... Photo Illustration by Andrea D'Aquino

Supported by

By Julia Rosen

Ms. Rosen is a journalist with a Ph.D. in geology. Her research involved studying ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica to understand past climate changes.

• Published April 19, 2021 Updated Nov. 6, 2021

The science of climate change is more solid and widely agreed upon than you might think. But the scope of the topic, as well as rampant disinformation, can make it hard to separate fact from fiction. Here, we’ve done our best to present you with not only the most accurate scientific information, but also an explanation of how we know it.

How do we know climate change is really happening?

How much agreement is there among scientists about climate change, do we really only have 150 years of climate data how is that enough to tell us about centuries of change, how do we know climate change is caused by humans, since greenhouse gases occur naturally, how do we know they’re causing earth’s temperature to rise, why should we be worried that the planet has warmed 2°f since the 1800s, is climate change a part of the planet’s natural warming and cooling cycles, how do we know global warming is not because of the sun or volcanoes, how can winters and certain places be getting colder if the planet is warming, wildfires and bad weather have always happened. how do we know there’s a connection to climate change, how bad are the effects of climate change going to be, what will it cost to do something about climate change, versus doing nothing.

Climate change is often cast as a prediction made by complicated computer models. But the scientific basis for climate change is much broader, and models are actually only one part of it (and, for what it’s worth, they’re surprisingly accurate ).

For more than a century , scientists have understood the basic physics behind why greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide cause warming. These gases make up just a small fraction of the atmosphere but exert outsized control on Earth’s climate by trapping some of the planet’s heat before it escapes into space. This greenhouse effect is important: It’s why a planet so far from the sun has liquid water and life!

However, during the Industrial Revolution, people started burning coal and other fossil fuels to power factories, smelters and steam engines, which added more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. Ever since, human activities have been heating the planet.

We know this is true thanks to an overwhelming body of evidence that begins with temperature measurements taken at weather stations and on ships starting in the mid-1800s. Later, scientists began tracking surface temperatures with satellites and looking for clues about climate change in geologic records. Together, these data all tell the same story: Earth is getting hotter.

Average global temperatures have increased by 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit, or 1.2 degrees Celsius, since 1880, with the greatest changes happening in the late 20th century. Land areas have warmed more than the sea surface and the Arctic has warmed the most — by more than 4 degrees Fahrenheit just since the 1960s. Temperature extremes have also shifted. In the United States, daily record highs now outnumber record lows two-to-one.

Where it was cooler or warmer in 2020 compared with the middle of the 20th century

This warming is unprecedented in recent geologic history. A famous illustration, first published in 1998 and often called the hockey-stick graph, shows how temperatures remained fairly flat for centuries (the shaft of the stick) before turning sharply upward (the blade). It’s based on data from tree rings, ice cores and other natural indicators. And the basic picture , which has withstood decades of scrutiny from climate scientists and contrarians alike, shows that Earth is hotter today than it’s been in at least 1,000 years, and probably much longer.

In fact, surface temperatures actually mask the true scale of climate change, because the ocean has absorbed 90 percent of the heat trapped by greenhouse gases . Measurements collected over the last six decades by oceanographic expeditions and networks of floating instruments show that every layer of the ocean is warming up. According to one study , the ocean has absorbed as much heat between 1997 and 2015 as it did in the previous 130 years.

We also know that climate change is happening because we see the effects everywhere. Ice sheets and glaciers are shrinking while sea levels are rising. Arctic sea ice is disappearing. In the spring, snow melts sooner and plants flower earlier. Animals are moving to higher elevations and latitudes to find cooler conditions. And droughts, floods and wildfires have all gotten more extreme. Models predicted many of these changes, but observations show they are now coming to pass.

Back to top .

There’s no denying that scientists love a good, old-fashioned argument. But when it comes to climate change, there is virtually no debate: Numerous studies have found that more than 90 percent of scientists who study Earth’s climate agree that the planet is warming and that humans are the primary cause. Most major scientific bodies, from NASA to the World Meteorological Organization , endorse this view. That’s an astounding level of consensus given the contrarian, competitive nature of the scientific enterprise, where questions like what killed the dinosaurs remain bitterly contested .

Scientific agreement about climate change started to emerge in the late 1980s, when the influence of human-caused warming began to rise above natural climate variability. By 1991, two-thirds of earth and atmospheric scientists surveyed for an early consensus study said that they accepted the idea of anthropogenic global warming. And by 1995, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a famously conservative body that periodically takes stock of the state of scientific knowledge, concluded that “the balance of evidence suggests that there is a discernible human influence on global climate.” Currently, more than 97 percent of publishing climate scientists agree on the existence and cause of climate change (as does nearly 60 percent of the general population of the United States).

So where did we get the idea that there’s still debate about climate change? A lot of it came from coordinated messaging campaigns by companies and politicians that opposed climate action. Many pushed the narrative that scientists still hadn’t made up their minds about climate change, even though that was misleading. Frank Luntz, a Republican consultant, explained the rationale in an infamous 2002 memo to conservative lawmakers: “Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly,” he wrote. Questioning consensus remains a common talking point today, and the 97 percent figure has become something of a lightning rod .

To bolster the falsehood of lingering scientific doubt, some people have pointed to things like the Global Warming Petition Project, which urged the United States government to reject the Kyoto Protocol of 1997, an early international climate agreement. The petition proclaimed that climate change wasn’t happening, and even if it were, it wouldn’t be bad for humanity. Since 1998, more than 30,000 people with science degrees have signed it. However, nearly 90 percent of them studied something other than Earth, atmospheric or environmental science, and the signatories included just 39 climatologists. Most were engineers, doctors, and others whose training had little to do with the physics of the climate system.

A few well-known researchers remain opposed to the scientific consensus. Some, like Willie Soon, a researcher affiliated with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, have ties to the fossil fuel industry . Others do not, but their assertions have not held up under the weight of evidence. At least one prominent skeptic, the physicist Richard Muller, changed his mind after reassessing historical temperature data as part of the Berkeley Earth project. His team’s findings essentially confirmed the results he had set out to investigate, and he came away firmly convinced that human activities were warming the planet. “Call me a converted skeptic,” he wrote in an Op-Ed for the Times in 2012.

Mr. Luntz, the Republican pollster, has also reversed his position on climate change and now advises politicians on how to motivate climate action.

A final note on uncertainty: Denialists often use it as evidence that climate science isn’t settled. However, in science, uncertainty doesn’t imply a lack of knowledge. Rather, it’s a measure of how well something is known. In the case of climate change, scientists have found a range of possible future changes in temperature, precipitation and other important variables — which will depend largely on how quickly we reduce emissions. But uncertainty does not undermine their confidence that climate change is real and that people are causing it.

Earth’s climate is inherently variable. Some years are hot and others are cold, some decades bring more hurricanes than others, some ancient droughts spanned the better part of centuries. Glacial cycles operate over many millenniums. So how can scientists look at data collected over a relatively short period of time and conclude that humans are warming the planet? The answer is that the instrumental temperature data that we have tells us a lot, but it’s not all we have to go on.

Historical records stretch back to the 1880s (and often before), when people began to regularly measure temperatures at weather stations and on ships as they traversed the world’s oceans. These data show a clear warming trend during the 20th century.

Global average temperature compared with the middle of the 20th century

+0.75°C

–0.25°

Some have questioned whether these records could be skewed, for instance, by the fact that a disproportionate number of weather stations are near cities, which tend to be hotter than surrounding areas as a result of the so-called urban heat island effect. However, researchers regularly correct for these potential biases when reconstructing global temperatures. In addition, warming is corroborated by independent data like satellite observations, which cover the whole planet, and other ways of measuring temperature changes.

Much has also been made of the small dips and pauses that punctuate the rising temperature trend of the last 150 years. But these are just the result of natural climate variability or other human activities that temporarily counteract greenhouse warming. For instance, in the mid-1900s, internal climate dynamics and light-blocking pollution from coal-fired power plants halted global warming for a few decades. (Eventually, rising greenhouse gases and pollution-control laws caused the planet to start heating up again.) Likewise, the so-called warming hiatus of the 2000s was partly a result of natural climate variability that allowed more heat to enter the ocean rather than warm the atmosphere. The years since have been the hottest on record .

Still, could the entire 20th century just be one big natural climate wiggle? To address that question, we can look at other kinds of data that give a longer perspective. Researchers have used geologic records like tree rings, ice cores, corals and sediments that preserve information about prehistoric climates to extend the climate record. The resulting picture of global temperature change is basically flat for centuries, then turns sharply upward over the last 150 years. It has been a target of climate denialists for decades. However, study after study has confirmed the results , which show that the planet hasn’t been this hot in at least 1,000 years, and probably longer.

Scientists have studied past climate changes to understand the factors that can cause the planet to warm or cool. The big ones are changes in solar energy, ocean circulation, volcanic activity and the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. And they have each played a role at times.

For example, 300 years ago, a combination of reduced solar output and increased volcanic activity cooled parts of the planet enough that Londoners regularly ice skated on the Thames . About 12,000 years ago, major changes in Atlantic circulation plunged the Northern Hemisphere into a frigid state. And 56 million years ago, a giant burst of greenhouse gases, from volcanic activity or vast deposits of methane (or both), abruptly warmed the planet by at least 9 degrees Fahrenheit, scrambling the climate, choking the oceans and triggering mass extinctions.

In trying to determine the cause of current climate changes, scientists have looked at all of these factors . The first three have varied a bit over the last few centuries and they have quite likely had modest effects on climate , particularly before 1950. But they cannot account for the planet’s rapidly rising temperature, especially in the second half of the 20th century, when solar output actually declined and volcanic eruptions exerted a cooling effect.

That warming is best explained by rising greenhouse gas concentrations . Greenhouse gases have a powerful effect on climate (see the next question for why). And since the Industrial Revolution, humans have been adding more of them to the atmosphere, primarily by extracting and burning fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas, which releases carbon dioxide.

Bubbles of ancient air trapped in ice show that, before about 1750, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was roughly 280 parts per million. It began to rise slowly and crossed the 300 p.p.m. threshold around 1900. CO2 levels then accelerated as cars and electricity became big parts of modern life, recently topping 420 p.p.m . The concentration of methane, the second most important greenhouse gas, has more than doubled. We’re now emitting carbon much faster than it was released 56 million years ago .

30 billion metric tons

Carbon dioxide emitted worldwide 1850-2017

Rest of world

Other developed

European Union

Developed economies

Other countries

United States

E.U. and U.K.

These rapid increases in greenhouse gases have caused the climate to warm abruptly. In fact, climate models suggest that greenhouse warming can explain virtually all of the temperature change since 1950. According to the most recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which assesses published scientific literature, natural drivers and internal climate variability can only explain a small fraction of late-20th century warming.

Another study put it this way: The odds of current warming occurring without anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are less than 1 in 100,000 .

But greenhouse gases aren’t the only climate-altering compounds people put into the air. Burning fossil fuels also produces particulate pollution that reflects sunlight and cools the planet. Scientists estimate that this pollution has masked up to half of the greenhouse warming we would have otherwise experienced.

Greenhouse gases like water vapor and carbon dioxide serve an important role in the climate. Without them, Earth would be far too cold to maintain liquid water and humans would not exist!

Here’s how it works: the planet’s temperature is basically a function of the energy the Earth absorbs from the sun (which heats it up) and the energy Earth emits to space as infrared radiation (which cools it down). Because of their molecular structure, greenhouse gases temporarily absorb some of that outgoing infrared radiation and then re-emit it in all directions, sending some of that energy back toward the surface and heating the planet . Scientists have understood this process since the 1850s .

Greenhouse gas concentrations have varied naturally in the past. Over millions of years, atmospheric CO2 levels have changed depending on how much of the gas volcanoes belched into the air and how much got removed through geologic processes. On time scales of hundreds to thousands of years, concentrations have changed as carbon has cycled between the ocean, soil and air.

Today, however, we are the ones causing CO2 levels to increase at an unprecedented pace by taking ancient carbon from geologic deposits of fossil fuels and putting it into the atmosphere when we burn them. Since 1750, carbon dioxide concentrations have increased by almost 50 percent. Methane and nitrous oxide, other important anthropogenic greenhouse gases that are released mainly by agricultural activities, have also spiked over the last 250 years.

We know based on the physics described above that this should cause the climate to warm. We also see certain telltale “fingerprints” of greenhouse warming. For example, nights are warming even faster than days because greenhouse gases don’t go away when the sun sets. And upper layers of the atmosphere have actually cooled, because more energy is being trapped by greenhouse gases in the lower atmosphere.

We also know that we are the cause of rising greenhouse gas concentrations — and not just because we can measure the CO2 coming out of tailpipes and smokestacks. We can see it in the chemical signature of the carbon in CO2.

Carbon comes in three different masses: 12, 13 and 14. Things made of organic matter (including fossil fuels) tend to have relatively less carbon-13. Volcanoes tend to produce CO2 with relatively more carbon-13. And over the last century, the carbon in atmospheric CO2 has gotten lighter, pointing to an organic source.

We can tell it’s old organic matter by looking for carbon-14, which is radioactive and decays over time. Fossil fuels are too ancient to have any carbon-14 left in them, so if they were behind rising CO2 levels, you would expect the amount of carbon-14 in the atmosphere to drop, which is exactly what the data show .

It’s important to note that water vapor is the most abundant greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. However, it does not cause warming; instead it responds to it . That’s because warmer air holds more moisture, which creates a snowball effect in which human-caused warming allows the atmosphere to hold more water vapor and further amplifies climate change. This so-called feedback cycle has doubled the warming caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.

A common source of confusion when it comes to climate change is the difference between weather and climate. Weather is the constantly changing set of meteorological conditions that we experience when we step outside, whereas climate is the long-term average of those conditions, usually calculated over a 30-year period. Or, as some say: Weather is your mood and climate is your personality.

So while 2 degrees Fahrenheit doesn’t represent a big change in the weather, it’s a huge change in climate. As we’ve already seen, it’s enough to melt ice and raise sea levels, to shift rainfall patterns around the world and to reorganize ecosystems, sending animals scurrying toward cooler habitats and killing trees by the millions.

It’s also important to remember that two degrees represents the global average, and many parts of the world have already warmed by more than that. For example, land areas have warmed about twice as much as the sea surface. And the Arctic has warmed by about 5 degrees. That’s because the loss of snow and ice at high latitudes allows the ground to absorb more energy, causing additional heating on top of greenhouse warming.

Relatively small long-term changes in climate averages also shift extremes in significant ways. For instance, heat waves have always happened, but they have shattered records in recent years. In June of 2020, a town in Siberia registered temperatures of 100 degrees . And in Australia, meteorologists have added a new color to their weather maps to show areas where temperatures exceed 125 degrees. Rising sea levels have also increased the risk of flooding because of storm surges and high tides. These are the foreshocks of climate change.

And we are in for more changes in the future — up to 9 degrees Fahrenheit of average global warming by the end of the century, in the worst-case scenario . For reference, the difference in global average temperatures between now and the peak of the last ice age, when ice sheets covered large parts of North America and Europe, is about 11 degrees Fahrenheit.

Under the Paris Climate Agreement, which President Biden recently rejoined, countries have agreed to try to limit total warming to between 1.5 and 2 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 and 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, since preindustrial times. And even this narrow range has huge implications . According to scientific studies, the difference between 2.7 and 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit will very likely mean the difference between coral reefs hanging on or going extinct, and between summer sea ice persisting in the Arctic or disappearing completely. It will also determine how many millions of people suffer from water scarcity and crop failures, and how many are driven from their homes by rising seas. In other words, one degree Fahrenheit makes a world of difference.

Earth’s climate has always changed. Hundreds of millions of years ago, the entire planet froze . Fifty million years ago, alligators lived in what we now call the Arctic . And for the last 2.6 million years, the planet has cycled between ice ages when the planet was up to 11 degrees cooler and ice sheets covered much of North America and Europe, and milder interglacial periods like the one we’re in now.

Climate denialists often point to these natural climate changes as a way to cast doubt on the idea that humans are causing climate to change today. However, that argument rests on a logical fallacy. It’s like “seeing a murdered body and concluding that people have died of natural causes in the past, so the murder victim must also have died of natural causes,” a team of social scientists wrote in The Debunking Handbook , which explains the misinformation strategies behind many climate myths.

Indeed, we know that different mechanisms caused the climate to change in the past. Glacial cycles, for example, were triggered by periodic variations in Earth’s orbit , which take place over tens of thousands of years and change how solar energy gets distributed around the globe and across the seasons.

These orbital variations don’t affect the planet’s temperature much on their own. But they set off a cascade of other changes in the climate system; for instance, growing or melting vast Northern Hemisphere ice sheets and altering ocean circulation. These changes, in turn, affect climate by altering the amount of snow and ice, which reflect sunlight, and by changing greenhouse gas concentrations. This is actually part of how we know that greenhouse gases have the ability to significantly affect Earth’s temperature.

For at least the last 800,000 years , atmospheric CO2 concentrations oscillated between about 180 parts per million during ice ages and about 280 p.p.m. during warmer periods, as carbon moved between oceans, forests, soils and the atmosphere. These changes occurred in lock step with global temperatures, and are a major reason the entire planet warmed and cooled during glacial cycles, not just the frozen poles.

Today, however, CO2 levels have soared to 420 p.p.m. — the highest they’ve been in at least three million years . The concentration of CO2 is also increasing about 100 times faster than it did at the end of the last ice age. This suggests something else is going on, and we know what it is: Since the Industrial Revolution, humans have been burning fossil fuels and releasing greenhouse gases that are heating the planet now (see Question 5 for more details on how we know this, and Questions 4 and 8 for how we know that other natural forces aren’t to blame).

Over the next century or two, societies and ecosystems will experience the consequences of this climate change. But our emissions will have even more lasting geologic impacts: According to some studies, greenhouse gas levels may have already warmed the planet enough to delay the onset of the next glacial cycle for at least an additional 50,000 years.

The sun is the ultimate source of energy in Earth’s climate system, so it’s a natural candidate for causing climate change. And solar activity has certainly changed over time. We know from satellite measurements and other astronomical observations that the sun’s output changes on 11-year cycles. Geologic records and sunspot numbers, which astronomers have tracked for centuries, also show long-term variations in the sun’s activity, including some exceptionally quiet periods in the late 1600s and early 1800s.

We know that, from 1900 until the 1950s, solar irradiance increased. And studies suggest that this had a modest effect on early 20th century climate, explaining up to 10 percent of the warming that’s occurred since the late 1800s. However, in the second half of the century, when the most warming occurred, solar activity actually declined . This disparity is one of the main reasons we know that the sun is not the driving force behind climate change.

Another reason we know that solar activity hasn’t caused recent warming is that, if it had, all the layers of the atmosphere should be heating up. Instead, data show that the upper atmosphere has actually cooled in recent decades — a hallmark of greenhouse warming .

So how about volcanoes? Eruptions cool the planet by injecting ash and aerosol particles into the atmosphere that reflect sunlight. We’ve observed this effect in the years following large eruptions. There are also some notable historical examples, like when Iceland’s Laki volcano erupted in 1783, causing widespread crop failures in Europe and beyond, and the “ year without a summer ,” which followed the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia.

Since volcanoes mainly act as climate coolers, they can’t really explain recent warming. However, scientists say that they may also have contributed slightly to rising temperatures in the early 20th century. That’s because there were several large eruptions in the late 1800s that cooled the planet, followed by a few decades with no major volcanic events when warming caught up. During the second half of the 20th century, though, several big eruptions occurred as the planet was heating up fast. If anything, they temporarily masked some amount of human-caused warming.

The second way volcanoes can impact climate is by emitting carbon dioxide. This is important on time scales of millions of years — it’s what keeps the planet habitable (see Question 5 for more on the greenhouse effect). But by comparison to modern anthropogenic emissions, even big eruptions like Krakatoa and Mount St. Helens are just a drop in the bucket. After all, they last only a few hours or days, while we burn fossil fuels 24-7. Studies suggest that, today, volcanoes account for 1 to 2 percent of total CO2 emissions.

When a big snowstorm hits the United States, climate denialists can try to cite it as proof that climate change isn’t happening. In 2015, Senator James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican, famously lobbed a snowball in the Senate as he denounced climate science. But these events don’t actually disprove climate change.

While there have been some memorable storms in recent years, winters are actually warming across the world. In the United States, average temperatures in December, January and February have increased by about 2.5 degrees this century.

On the flip side, record cold days are becoming less common than record warm days. In the United States, record highs now outnumber record lows two-to-one . And ever-smaller areas of the country experience extremely cold winter temperatures . (The same trends are happening globally.)

So what’s with the blizzards? Weather always varies, so it’s no surprise that we still have severe winter storms even as average temperatures rise. However, some studies suggest that climate change may be to blame. One possibility is that rapid Arctic warming has affected atmospheric circulation, including the fast-flowing, high-altitude air that usually swirls over the North Pole (a.k.a. the Polar Vortex ). Some studies suggest that these changes are bringing more frigid temperatures to lower latitudes and causing weather systems to stall , allowing storms to produce more snowfall. This may explain what we’ve experienced in the U.S. over the past few decades, as well as a wintertime cooling trend in Siberia , although exactly how the Arctic affects global weather remains a topic of ongoing scientific debate .

Climate change may also explain the apparent paradox behind some of the other places on Earth that haven’t warmed much. For instance, a splotch of water in the North Atlantic has cooled in recent years, and scientists say they suspect that may be because ocean circulation is slowing as a result of freshwater streaming off a melting Greenland . If this circulation grinds almost to a halt, as it’s done in the geologic past, it would alter weather patterns around the world.

Not all cold weather stems from some counterintuitive consequence of climate change. But it’s a good reminder that Earth’s climate system is complex and chaotic, so the effects of human-caused changes will play out differently in different places. That’s why “global warming” is a bit of an oversimplification. Instead, some scientists have suggested that the phenomenon of human-caused climate change would more aptly be called “ global weirding .”

Extreme weather and natural disasters are part of life on Earth — just ask the dinosaurs. But there is good evidence that climate change has increased the frequency and severity of certain phenomena like heat waves, droughts and floods. Recent research has also allowed scientists to identify the influence of climate change on specific events.

Let’s start with heat waves . Studies show that stretches of abnormally high temperatures now happen about five times more often than they would without climate change, and they last longer, too. Climate models project that, by the 2040s, heat waves will be about 12 times more frequent. And that’s concerning since extreme heat often causes increased hospitalizations and deaths, particularly among older people and those with underlying health conditions. In the summer of 2003, for example, a heat wave caused an estimated 70,000 excess deaths across Europe. (Human-caused warming amplified the death toll .)

Climate change has also exacerbated droughts , primarily by increasing evaporation. Droughts occur naturally because of random climate variability and factors like whether El Niño or La Niña conditions prevail in the tropical Pacific. But some researchers have found evidence that greenhouse warming has been affecting droughts since even before the Dust Bowl . And it continues to do so today. According to one analysis , the drought that afflicted the American Southwest from 2000 to 2018 was almost 50 percent more severe because of climate change. It was the worst drought the region had experienced in more than 1,000 years.

Rising temperatures have also increased the intensity of heavy precipitation events and the flooding that often follows. For example, studies have found that, because warmer air holds more moisture, Hurricane Harvey, which struck Houston in 2017, dropped between 15 and 40 percent more rainfall than it would have without climate change.

It’s still unclear whether climate change is changing the overall frequency of hurricanes, but it is making them stronger . And warming appears to favor certain kinds of weather patterns, like the “ Midwest Water Hose ” events that caused devastating flooding across the Midwest in 2019 .

It’s important to remember that in most natural disasters, there are multiple factors at play. For instance, the 2019 Midwest floods occurred after a recent cold snap had frozen the ground solid, preventing the soil from absorbing rainwater and increasing runoff into the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. These waterways have also been reshaped by levees and other forms of river engineering, some of which failed in the floods.

Wildfires are another phenomenon with multiple causes. In many places, fire risk has increased because humans have aggressively fought natural fires and prevented Indigenous peoples from carrying out traditional burning practices. This has allowed fuel to accumulate that makes current fires worse .

However, climate change still plays a major role by heating and drying forests, turning them into tinderboxes. Studies show that warming is the driving factor behind the recent increases in wildfires; one analysis found that climate change is responsible for doubling the area burned across the American West between 1984 and 2015. And researchers say that warming will only make fires bigger and more dangerous in the future.

It depends on how aggressively we act to address climate change. If we continue with business as usual, by the end of the century, it will be too hot to go outside during heat waves in the Middle East and South Asia . Droughts will grip Central America, the Mediterranean and southern Africa. And many island nations and low-lying areas, from Texas to Bangladesh, will be overtaken by rising seas. Conversely, climate change could bring welcome warming and extended growing seasons to the upper Midwest , Canada, the Nordic countries and Russia . Farther north, however, the loss of snow, ice and permafrost will upend the traditions of Indigenous peoples and threaten infrastructure.

It’s complicated, but the underlying message is simple: unchecked climate change will likely exacerbate existing inequalities . At a national level, poorer countries will be hit hardest, even though they have historically emitted only a fraction of the greenhouse gases that cause warming. That’s because many less developed countries tend to be in tropical regions where additional warming will make the climate increasingly intolerable for humans and crops. These nations also often have greater vulnerabilities, like large coastal populations and people living in improvised housing that is easily damaged in storms. And they have fewer resources to adapt, which will require expensive measures like redesigning cities, engineering coastlines and changing how people grow food.

Already, between 1961 and 2000, climate change appears to have harmed the economies of the poorest countries while boosting the fortunes of the wealthiest nations that have done the most to cause the problem, making the global wealth gap 25 percent bigger than it would otherwise have been. Similarly, the Global Climate Risk Index found that lower income countries — like Myanmar, Haiti and Nepal — rank high on the list of nations most affected by extreme weather between 1999 and 2018. Climate change has also contributed to increased human migration, which is expected to increase significantly .

Even within wealthy countries, the poor and marginalized will suffer the most. People with more resources have greater buffers, like air-conditioners to keep their houses cool during dangerous heat waves, and the means to pay the resulting energy bills. They also have an easier time evacuating their homes before disasters, and recovering afterward. Lower income people have fewer of these advantages, and they are also more likely to live in hotter neighborhoods and work outdoors, where they face the brunt of climate change.

These inequalities will play out on an individual, community, and regional level. A 2017 analysis of the U.S. found that, under business as usual, the poorest one-third of counties, which are concentrated in the South, will experience damages totaling as much as 20 percent of gross domestic product, while others, mostly in the northern part of the country, will see modest economic gains. Solomon Hsiang, an economist at University of California, Berkeley, and the lead author of the study, has said that climate change “may result in the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in the country’s history.”

Even the climate “winners” will not be immune from all climate impacts, though. Desirable locations will face an influx of migrants. And as the coronavirus pandemic has demonstrated, disasters in one place quickly ripple across our globalized economy. For instance, scientists expect climate change to increase the odds of multiple crop failures occurring at the same time in different places, throwing the world into a food crisis .

On top of that, warmer weather is aiding the spread of infectious diseases and the vectors that transmit them, like ticks and mosquitoes . Research has also identified troubling correlations between rising temperatures and increased interpersonal violence , and climate change is widely recognized as a “threat multiplier” that increases the odds of larger conflicts within and between countries. In other words, climate change will bring many changes that no amount of money can stop. What could help is taking action to limit warming.

One of the most common arguments against taking aggressive action to combat climate change is that doing so will kill jobs and cripple the economy. But this implies that there’s an alternative in which we pay nothing for climate change. And unfortunately, there isn’t. In reality, not tackling climate change will cost a lot , and cause enormous human suffering and ecological damage, while transitioning to a greener economy would benefit many people and ecosystems around the world.

Let’s start with how much it will cost to address climate change. To keep warming well below 2 degrees Celsius, the goal of the Paris Climate Agreement, society will have to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by the middle of this century. That will require significant investments in things like renewable energy, electric cars and charging infrastructure, not to mention efforts to adapt to hotter temperatures, rising sea-levels and other unavoidable effects of current climate changes. And we’ll have to make changes fast.

Estimates of the cost vary widely. One recent study found that keeping warming to 2 degrees Celsius would require a total investment of between $4 trillion and $60 trillion, with a median estimate of $16 trillion, while keeping warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius could cost between $10 trillion and $100 trillion, with a median estimate of $30 trillion. (For reference, the entire world economy was about $88 trillion in 2019.) Other studies have found that reaching net zero will require annual investments ranging from less than 1.5 percent of global gross domestic product to as much as 4 percent . That’s a lot, but within the range of historical energy investments in countries like the U.S.

Now, let’s consider the costs of unchecked climate change, which will fall hardest on the most vulnerable. These include damage to property and infrastructure from sea-level rise and extreme weather, death and sickness linked to natural disasters, pollution and infectious disease, reduced agricultural yields and lost labor productivity because of rising temperatures, decreased water availability and increased energy costs, and species extinction and habitat destruction. Dr. Hsiang, the U.C. Berkeley economist, describes it as “death by a thousand cuts.”

As a result, climate damages are hard to quantify. Moody’s Analytics estimates that even 2 degrees Celsius of warming will cost the world $69 trillion by 2100, and economists expect the toll to keep rising with the temperature. In a recent survey , economists estimated the cost would equal 5 percent of global G.D.P. at 3 degrees Celsius of warming (our trajectory under current policies) and 10 percent for 5 degrees Celsius. Other research indicates that, if current warming trends continue, global G.D.P. per capita will decrease between 7 percent and 23 percent by the end of the century — an economic blow equivalent to multiple coronavirus pandemics every year. And some fear these are vast underestimates .

Already, studies suggest that climate change has slashed incomes in the poorest countries by as much as 30 percent and reduced global agricultural productivity by 21 percent since 1961. Extreme weather events have also racked up a large bill. In 2020, in the United States alone, climate-related disasters like hurricanes, droughts, and wildfires caused nearly $100 billion in damages to businesses, property and infrastructure, compared to an average of $18 billion per year in the 1980s.

Given the steep price of inaction, many economists say that addressing climate change is a better deal . It’s like that old saying: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. In this case, limiting warming will greatly reduce future damage and inequality caused by climate change. It will also produce so-called co-benefits, like saving one million lives every year by reducing air pollution, and millions more from eating healthier, climate-friendly diets. Some studies even find that meeting the Paris Agreement goals could create jobs and increase global G.D.P . And, of course, reining in climate change will spare many species and ecosystems upon which humans depend — and which many people believe to have their own innate value.

The challenge is that we need to reduce emissions now to avoid damages later, which requires big investments over the next few decades. And the longer we delay, the more we will pay to meet the Paris goals. One recent analysis found that reaching net-zero by 2050 would cost the U.S. almost twice as much if we waited until 2030 instead of acting now. But even if we miss the Paris target, the economics still make a strong case for climate action, because every additional degree of warming will cost us more — in dollars, and in lives.

Veronica Penney contributed reporting.

Illustration photographs by Esther Horvath, Max Whittaker, David Maurice Smith and Talia Herman for The New York Times; Esther Horvath/Alfred-Wegener-Institut

An earlier version of this article misidentified the authors of The Debunking Handbook. It was written by social scientists who study climate communication, not a team of climate scientists.

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Essay on Global Warming

• Updated on  
• Apr 27, 2024

Being able to write an essay is an integral part of mastering any language. Essays form an integral part of many academic and scholastic exams like the SAT , and UPSC amongst many others. It is a crucial evaluative part of English proficiency tests as well like IELTS , TOEFL , etc. Major essays are meant to emphasize public issues of concern that can have significant consequences on the world. To understand the concept of Global Warming and its causes and effects, we must first examine the many factors that influence the planet’s temperature and what this implies for the world’s future. Here’s an unbiased look at the essay on Global Warming and other essential related topics.

Short Essay on Global Warming and Climate Change?

Since the industrial and scientific revolutions, Earth’s resources have been gradually depleted. Furthermore, the start of the world’s population’s exponential expansion is particularly hard on the environment. Simply put, as the population’s need for consumption grows, so does the use of natural resources , as well as the waste generated by that consumption.

Climate change has been one of the most significant long-term consequences of this. Climate change is more than just the rise or fall of global temperatures; it also affects rain cycles, wind patterns, cyclone frequencies, sea levels, and other factors. It has an impact on all major life groupings on the planet.

Also Read: World Population Day

What is Global Warming?

Global warming is the unusually rapid increase in Earth’s average surface temperature over the past century, primarily due to the greenhouse gases released by people burning fossil fuels . The greenhouse gases consist of methane, nitrous oxide, ozone, carbon dioxide, water vapour, and chlorofluorocarbons. The weather prediction has been becoming more complex with every passing year, with seasons more indistinguishable, and the general temperatures hotter.

The number of hurricanes, cyclones, droughts, floods, etc., has risen steadily since the onset of the 21st century. The supervillain behind all these changes is Global Warming. The name is quite self-explanatory; it means the rise in the temperature of the Earth.

Also Read: What is a Natural Disaster?

What are the Causes of Global Warming?

According to recent studies, many scientists believe the following are the primary four causes of global warming:

• Deforestation 
• Greenhouse emissions
• Carbon emissions per capita

Extreme global warming is causing natural disasters , which can be seen all around us. One of the causes of global warming is the extreme release of greenhouse gases that become trapped on the earth’s surface, causing the temperature to rise. Similarly, volcanoes contribute to global warming by spewing excessive CO2 into the atmosphere.

The increase in population is one of the major causes of Global Warming. This increase in population also leads to increased air pollution . Automobiles emit a lot of CO2, which remains in the atmosphere. This increase in population is also causing deforestation, which contributes to global warming.

The earth’s surface emits energy into the atmosphere in the form of heat, keeping the balance with the incoming energy. Global warming depletes the ozone layer, bringing about the end of the world. There is a clear indication that increased global warming will result in the extinction of all life on Earth’s surface.

Also Read: Land, Soil, Water, Natural Vegetation, and Wildlife Resources

Solutions for Global Warming

Of course, industries and multinational conglomerates emit more carbon than the average citizen. Nonetheless, activism and community effort are the only viable ways to slow the worsening effects of global warming. Furthermore, at the state or government level, world leaders must develop concrete plans and step-by-step programmes to ensure that no further harm is done to the environment in general.

Although we are almost too late to slow the rate of global warming, finding the right solution is critical. Everyone, from individuals to governments, must work together to find a solution to Global Warming. Some of the factors to consider are pollution control, population growth, and the use of natural resources.

One very important contribution you can make is to reduce your use of plastic. Plastic is the primary cause of global warming, and recycling it takes years. Another factor to consider is deforestation, which will aid in the control of global warming. More tree planting should be encouraged to green the environment. Certain rules should also govern industrialization. Building industries in green zones that affect plants and species should be prohibited.

Also Read: Essay on Pollution

Effects of Global Warming

Global warming is a real problem that many people want to disprove to gain political advantage. However, as global citizens, we must ensure that only the truth is presented in the media.

This decade has seen a significant impact from global warming. The two most common phenomena observed are glacier retreat and arctic shrinkage. Glaciers are rapidly melting. These are clear manifestations of climate change.

Another significant effect of global warming is the rise in sea level. Flooding is occurring in low-lying areas as a result of sea-level rise. Many countries have experienced extreme weather conditions. Every year, we have unusually heavy rain, extreme heat and cold, wildfires, and other natural disasters.

Similarly, as global warming continues, marine life is being severely impacted. This is causing the extinction of marine species as well as other problems. Furthermore, changes are expected in coral reefs, which will face extinction in the coming years. These effects will intensify in the coming years, effectively halting species expansion. Furthermore, humans will eventually feel the negative effects of Global Warming.

Also Read: Concept of Sustainable Development

Sample Essays on Global Warming

Here are some sample essays on Global Warming:

Essay on Global Warming Paragraph in 100 – 150 words

Global Warming is caused by the increase of carbon dioxide levels in the earth’s atmosphere and is a result of human activities that have been causing harm to our environment for the past few centuries now. Global Warming is something that can’t be ignored and steps have to be taken to tackle the situation globally. The average temperature is constantly rising by 1.5 degrees Celsius over the last few years.

The best method to prevent future damage to the earth, cutting down more forests should be banned and Afforestation should be encouraged. Start by planting trees near your homes and offices, participate in events, and teach the importance of planting trees. It is impossible to undo the damage but it is possible to stop further harm.

Also Read: Social Forestry

Essay on Global Warming in 250 Words

Over a long period, it is observed that the temperature of the earth is increasing. This affected wildlife, animals, humans, and every living organism on earth. Glaciers have been melting, and many countries have started water shortages, flooding, and erosion and all this is because of global warming. 

No one can be blamed for global warming except for humans. Human activities such as gases released from power plants, transportation, and deforestation have increased gases such as carbon dioxide, CFCs, and other pollutants in the earth’s atmosphere.                                              The main question is how can we control the current situation and build a better world for future generations. It starts with little steps by every individual. 

Start using cloth bags made from sustainable materials for all shopping purposes, instead of using high-watt lights use energy-efficient bulbs, switch off the electricity, don’t waste water, abolish deforestation and encourage planting more trees. Shift the use of energy from petroleum or other fossil fuels to wind and solar energy. Instead of throwing out the old clothes donate them to someone so that it is recycled. 

Donate old books, don’t waste paper.  Above all, spread awareness about global warming. Every little thing a person does towards saving the earth will contribute in big or small amounts. We must learn that 1% effort is better than no effort. Pledge to take care of Mother Nature and speak up about global warming.

Also Read: Types of Water Pollution

Essay on Global Warming in 500 Words

Global warming isn’t a prediction, it is happening! A person denying it or unaware of it is in the most simple terms complicit. Do we have another planet to live on? Unfortunately, we have been bestowed with this one planet only that can sustain life yet over the years we have turned a blind eye to the plight it is in. Global warming is not an abstract concept but a global phenomenon occurring ever so slowly even at this moment. Global Warming is a phenomenon that is occurring every minute resulting in a gradual increase in the Earth’s overall climate. Brought about by greenhouse gases that trap the solar radiation in the atmosphere, global warming can change the entire map of the earth, displacing areas, flooding many countries, and destroying multiple lifeforms. Extreme weather is a direct consequence of global warming but it is not an exhaustive consequence. There are virtually limitless effects of global warming which are all harmful to life on earth. The sea level is increasing by 0.12 inches per year worldwide. This is happening because of the melting of polar ice caps because of global warming. This has increased the frequency of floods in many lowland areas and has caused damage to coral reefs. The Arctic is one of the worst-hit areas affected by global warming. Air quality has been adversely affected and the acidity of the seawater has also increased causing severe damage to marine life forms. Severe natural disasters are brought about by global warming which has had dire effects on life and property. As long as mankind produces greenhouse gases, global warming will continue to accelerate. The consequences are felt at a much smaller scale which will increase to become drastic shortly. The power to save the day lies in the hands of humans, the need is to seize the day. Energy consumption should be reduced on an individual basis. Fuel-efficient cars and other electronics should be encouraged to reduce the wastage of energy sources. This will also improve air quality and reduce the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Global warming is an evil that can only be defeated when fought together. It is better late than never. If we all take steps today, we will have a much brighter future tomorrow. Global warming is the bane of our existence and various policies have come up worldwide to fight it but that is not enough. The actual difference is made when we work at an individual level to fight it. Understanding its import now is crucial before it becomes an irrevocable mistake. Exterminating global warming is of utmost importance and each one of us is as responsible for it as the next.  

Also Read: Essay on Library: 100, 200 and 250 Words

Essay on Global Warming UPSC

Always hear about global warming everywhere, but do we know what it is? The evil of the worst form, global warming is a phenomenon that can affect life more fatally. Global warming refers to the increase in the earth’s temperature as a result of various human activities. The planet is gradually getting hotter and threatening the existence of lifeforms on it. Despite being relentlessly studied and researched, global warming for the majority of the population remains an abstract concept of science. It is this concept that over the years has culminated in making global warming a stark reality and not a concept covered in books. Global warming is not caused by one sole reason that can be curbed. Multifarious factors cause global warming most of which are a part of an individual’s daily existence. Burning of fuels for cooking, in vehicles, and for other conventional uses, a large amount of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, and methane amongst many others is produced which accelerates global warming. Rampant deforestation also results in global warming as lesser green cover results in an increased presence of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which is a greenhouse gas.  Finding a solution to global warming is of immediate importance. Global warming is a phenomenon that has to be fought unitedly. Planting more trees can be the first step that can be taken toward warding off the severe consequences of global warming. Increasing the green cover will result in regulating the carbon cycle. There should be a shift from using nonrenewable energy to renewable energy such as wind or solar energy which causes less pollution and thereby hinder the acceleration of global warming. Reducing energy needs at an individual level and not wasting energy in any form is the most important step to be taken against global warming. The warning bells are tolling to awaken us from the deep slumber of complacency we have slipped into. Humans can fight against nature and it is high time we acknowledged that. With all our scientific progress and technological inventions, fighting off the negative effects of global warming is implausible. We have to remember that we do not inherit the earth from our ancestors but borrow it from our future generations and the responsibility lies on our shoulders to bequeath them a healthy planet for life to exist. 

Also Read: Essay on Disaster Management

Climate Change and Global Warming Essay

Global Warming and Climate Change are two sides of the same coin. Both are interrelated with each other and are two issues of major concern worldwide. Greenhouse gases released such as carbon dioxide, CFCs, and other pollutants in the earth’s atmosphere cause Global Warming which leads to climate change. Black holes have started to form in the ozone layer that protects the earth from harmful ultraviolet rays. 

Human activities have created climate change and global warming. Industrial waste and fumes are the major contributors to global warming. 

Another factor affecting is the burning of fossil fuels, deforestation and also one of the reasons for climate change.  Global warming has resulted in shrinking mountain glaciers in Antarctica, Greenland, and the Arctic and causing climate change. Switching from the use of fossil fuels to energy sources like wind and solar. 

When buying any electronic appliance buy the best quality with energy savings stars. Don’t waste water and encourage rainwater harvesting in your community. 

Also Read: Essay on Air Pollution

Tips to Write an Essay

Writing an effective essay needs skills that few people possess and even fewer know how to implement. While writing an essay can be an assiduous task that can be unnerving at times, some key pointers can be inculcated to draft a successful essay. These involve focusing on the structure of the essay, planning it out well, and emphasizing crucial details.

Mentioned below are some pointers that can help you write better structure and more thoughtful essays that will get across to your readers:

• Prepare an outline for the essay to ensure continuity and relevance and no break in the structure of the essay
• Decide on a thesis statement that will form the basis of your essay. It will be the point of your essay and help readers understand your contention
• Follow the structure of an introduction, a detailed body followed by a conclusion so that the readers can comprehend the essay in a particular manner without any dissonance.
• Make your beginning catchy and include solutions in your conclusion to make the essay insightful and lucrative to read
• Reread before putting it out and add your flair to the essay to make it more personal and thereby unique and intriguing for readers  

Also Read: I Love My India Essay: 100 and 500+ Words in English for School Students

Ans. Both natural and man-made factors contribute to global warming. The natural one also contains methane gas, volcanic eruptions, and greenhouse gases. Deforestation, mining, livestock raising, burning fossil fuels, and other man-made causes are next.

Ans. The government and the general public can work together to stop global warming. Trees must be planted more often, and deforestation must be prohibited. Auto usage needs to be curbed, and recycling needs to be promoted.

Ans. Switching to renewable energy sources , adopting sustainable farming, transportation, and energy methods, and conserving water and other natural resources.

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Digvijay Singh

Having 2+ years of experience in educational content writing, withholding a Bachelor's in Physical Education and Sports Science and a strong interest in writing educational content for students enrolled in domestic and foreign study abroad programmes. I believe in offering a distinct viewpoint to the table, to help students deal with the complexities of both domestic and foreign educational systems. Through engaging storytelling and insightful analysis, I aim to inspire my readers to embark on their educational journeys, whether abroad or at home, and to make the most of every learning opportunity that comes their way.

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This was really a good essay on global warming… There has been used many unic words..and I really liked it!!!Seriously I had been looking for a essay about Global warming just like this…

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I want to learn how to write essay writing so I joined this page.This page is very useful for everyone.

Hi, we are glad that we could help you to write essays. We have a beginner’s guide to write essays ( https://leverageedu.com/blog/essay-writing/ ) and we think this might help you.

It is not good , to have global warming in our earth .So we all have to afforestation program on all the world.

thank you so much

Very educative , helpful and it is really going to strength my English knowledge to structure my essay in future

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Global warming is the increase in 𝓽𝓱𝓮 ᴀᴠᴇʀᴀɢᴇ ᴛᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴀᴛᴜʀᴇs ᴏғ ᴇᴀʀᴛʜ🌎 ᴀᴛᴍᴏsᴘʜᴇʀᴇ

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April 27, 2024

Climate Leaders Debate Goal for Controlling Global Warming

A new U.N. program highlights the disconnect between climate messaging and the growing possibility of overshooting a key global warming threshold

By Chelsea Harvey & E&E News

Chair of the United Nations Sustainable Development Group Achim Steiner speaks during an exclusive interview in Istanbul, Turkiye on March 21, 2024.

Hakan Akgun/Anadolu via Getty Images

CLIMATEWIRE | NEW YORK — The United Nations Development Programme launched a new program Tuesday that aims to galvanize countries around stronger climate action — and keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Known as Climate Promise 2025, the plan centers on strengthening the carbon-cutting pledges that countries will update next year under the Paris climate agreement. It’s the latest stage of UNDP’s Climate Promise program , which worked with 128 countries on the 2020 round of pledges — known as nationally determined contributions, or NDCs.

“The next two years stand as one of the best chances we have as a global community to course correct our collective path and ensure warming stays below 1.5 degrees Celsius, staving off the worst effects of climate change,” said Achim Steiner, UNDP administrator, at an event launching the initiative in New York on Tuesday.

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Yet scientists warn that the 1.5-degree target — the Paris Agreement’s most ambitious goal — is already all but out of reach. Global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions aren’t happening fast enough, and many experts say it’s virtually certain that the world will at least temporarily overshoot that threshold.

It’s the latest example of a growing divide between the public messaging from many world leaders and the warnings from scientists that a breach of the 1.5-degree target is already imminent. The disconnect raises questions about how — and whether — world leaders should communicate the growing possibility of an overshoot.

“Sooner or later, policymakers will have to embrace the ‘overshoot story’ if they want to stick to 1.5C,” said Oliver Geden, a climate policy expert at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, in an email to POLITICO's E&E News.

If world leaders accept the likelihood of an overshoot, they can begin to consider ways to reverse it, Geden added. It’s possible for the world to temporarily exceed the 1.5-degree target and later use technological means to bring global temperatures back down — for instance, by drawing carbon dioxide back out of the atmosphere, in a strategy known as “negative emissions.”

Most potential global cooling strategies are still unproven at large scales, making them an uncertain solution. It’s not clear any of the technologies will ever be feasible at all, Geden said.

But "negative emissions" strategies are among the only methods that could keep the 1.5-degree target alive after an overshoot.

That means policymakers “would need to plan for and to communicate that the world needs to reach net-negative CO2 emissions after reaching net-zero around 2050,” Geden said.

But other experts argue that public messaging around the 1.5-degree target shouldn’t change, even if overshoot becomes unavoidable. The world must still continue to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions to keep as close to the original target as possible.

“You need to do the same things whether you're aiming for 1.5 or for 2 [degrees],” said Laura Pereira, a researcher at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. “It’s just that if you act now and do it rapidly enough, you can do 1.5.”

Some experts also worry that declaring an overshoot inevitable could also potentially hamper the momentum of global climate action plans.

“As soon as you throw your hands up in the air and say, 'Oh, we’re going to overshoot,' you're not going to have those hard discussions about what really needs to change,” Pereira said.

‘Becoming inevitable’

The debate is likely to intensify as the 1.5 degree threshold draws closer.

Global emissions would have to peak by 2025 and then fall a staggering 42 percent by 2030 in order to keep warming below 1.5 degrees, according to the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s top authority on global warming. The world would then need to hit net-zero emissions around 2050.

“Regarding the reachability of the 1.5ºC target, truly transformative action is needed to still be able to achieve the 1.5ºC goal without an at least temporary overshoot,” said Nico Wunderling, a scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, in an email.

Human societies can only emit a limited amount of additional carbon without overshooting the target, Wunderling added, and research suggests the planet is likely to burn through that budget within the next five years if greenhouse gas emissions don’t swiftly and dramatically drop.

So while it’s not impossible, he said, it’s “extremely ambitious” for the world to reach net-zero emissions in time to avoid 1.5 degrees of warming.

The world could still limit warming to 1.5 degrees after a short period of overshooting the target, he said. But the impacts of climate change worsen with every fraction of a degree the planet warms. And some consequences, like sea-level rise or plant and animal extinctions, can’t be easily reversed once they’ve happened, even if global temperatures later fall.

So if the world does blow through 1.5 degrees, scientists say, it’s crucial to limit the overshoot as much as possible.

That’s a growing concern among climate experts. Scientists have quietly warned for years that the world is unlikely to meet the 1.5-degree target . But their message has grown more urgent in the last few years.

Scientists were candid about the impending risks during their presentation of the third and final installment of the IPCC’s most recent major assessment report in April 2022.

“It is almost inevitable that we will at least temporarily overshoot 1.5,” Jim Skea, an energy expert at Imperial College London and co-chair of the IPCC working group that prepared the report, said at a 2022 virtual presentation of the findings.

Another U.N. report in 2022 warned that countries' carbon-cutting pledges were too weak and, as of that moment, there was “no credible pathway” to 1.5 C . And the 2023 emissions gap report , released in November, reiterated that failing to sufficiently reduce emissions over the next six years will make it “impossible to limit warming to 1.5C with no or limited overshoot.”

In December, leading international scientists presented an annual report to the U.N. on the year’s top climate insights. It concluded that overshooting the 1.5-degree target is “becoming inevitable.”

Immediate, radical and transformative action could technically still keep the target alive, the report noted. But the diminishing probability means that world leaders must also work to minimize overshoot as much as possible.

“Governments, corporations and other actors must now focus on minimizing the magnitude and duration of overshoot, while still acting to avoid it,” the report warns.

Keeping the target alive

U.N. messaging remains focused on staying below 1.5 degrees — period.

“We believe it is worth trying to bring the world together through nationally determined contributions to a scenario where 1.5 C remains at least within the realm of possibility,” said Steiner, UNDP’s administrator, at Tuesday’s Climate Promise launch.

The new initiative aspires to bring the next round of national pledges in line with the IPCC’s requirements for staying under 1.5 degrees. The plan takes a three-pronged approach, aiming to help countries scale up their ambition, accelerate their progress and increase the inclusivity of their climate plans, acknowledging the disproportionate impacts of global warming on Indigenous communities and other vulnerable populations.

“It’s make or break for the 1.5-degree limit,” said U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres at Tuesday’s launch event. “Today, humanity spews out over 40 gigatons of carbon dioxide every year. At this rate, the planet will soon be pushed past the 1.5-degree limit. Countries’ ambitious new national climate plans — which are due next year — are essential to avert this calamity.”

When the Paris Agreement was first adopted in 2015, scientists estimated that the world was on track for about 3.5 degrees of global warming, said Cassie Flynn, UNDP’s global director of climate change, at Tuesday’s launch. But the world has made progress since then — the current Paris climate pledges are consistent with warming of around 2.5 degrees.

The next round of national contributions could still bring that trajectory down by another degree, she said.

Technically speaking, the world could cut emissions in line with keeping global warming under 1.5 degrees. But that would require a Herculean overhaul of the global economy in record time, an unprecedented feat in human history.

Many scientists say that scenario is unlikely. But the fact that hitting the target is still technically feasible — at least for a few more years — keeps the idea of avoiding overshoot alive for now.

“The goal of staying under 1.5 degrees is alive until overshoot,” Pereira said. “You can always change things fundamentally.”

Reprinted from E&E News with permission from POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2024. E&E News provides essential news for energy and environment professionals.

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Global warming, introduction.

Global warming is the increase of average world temperatures as a result of what is known as the greenhouse effect. 

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Scientists expect global heating to exceed 1.5°C, and other nature and climate stories you need to read this week

Top nature and climate news: The world's oceans have broken temperature records every single day for a whole year and more Image:  Unsplash/William Bossen

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• This weekly round-up contains key nature and climate news from the past week.
• Top nature and climate stories: Scientists foresee at least 2.5°C of global heating this century; Ocean temperatures continue to rise; Renewable energy produced more than 30% of the world’s electricity in 2023.

1. Planet is headed for at least 2.5°C of heating, finds poll of scientists

Many of the world’s leading climate scientists expect global temperatures to rise to at least 2.5°C above pre-industrial levels this century, according to a survey by The Guardian .

Almost 80% of respondents from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, foresee at least 2.5°C of global heating. Almost half are concerned that temperatures would rise to at least 3°C, with only 6% thinking the internationally agreed 1.5°C limit would be possible.

The survey found that opinions were dependent on age and gender, but not based on geographical location. Younger scientists were found to be more pessimistic. 52% of respondents under 50 expected a rise of at least 3°C, compared to just 38% of those over 50.

A similar difference was found between genders. 49% of female scientists believe that global temperature will rise to at least 3°C, compared with 38% of male scientists.

Peter Cox, at the University of Exeter, told The Guardian that: “Climate change will not suddenly become dangerous at 1.5°C – it already is. And it will not be ‘game over’ if we pass 2°C, which we might well do.”

The climate fight must continue, with many leading scientists urging that every fraction of a degree avoided would reduce the impact of the consequences for humanity and the planet.

The Global Risks Report 2023 ranked failure to mitigate climate change as one of the most severe threats in the next two years, while climate- and nature- related risks lead the rankings by severity over the long term.

The World Economic Forum’s Centre for Nature and Climate is a multistakeholder platform that seeks to safeguard our global commons and drive systems transformation. It is accelerating action on climate change towards a net-zero, nature-positive future.

Learn more about our impact:

• Scaling up green technologies: Through a partnership with the US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, John Kerry, and over 65 global businesses, the First Movers Coalition has committed $12 billion in purchase commitments for green technologies to decarbonize the cement and concrete industry.
• 1 trillion trees: Over 90 global companies have committed to conserve, restore and grow more than 8 billion trees in 65 countries through the 1t.org initiative – which aims to achieve 1 trillion trees by 2030.
• Sustainable food production: Our Food Action Alliance is engaging 40 partners who are working on 29 flagship initiatives to provide healthy, nutritious, and safe foods in ways that safeguard our planet. In Vietnam, it supported the upskilling of 2.2 million farmers and aims to provide 20 million farmers with the skills to learn and adapt to new agricultural standards.
• Eliminating plastic pollution: Our Global Plastic Action Partnership is bringing together governments, businesses and civil society to shape a more sustainable world through the eradication of plastic pollution. In Ghana, more than 2,000 waste pickers are making an impact cleaning up beaches, drains and other sites.
• Protecting the ocean: Our 2030 Water Resources Group has facilitated almost $1 billion to finance water-related programmes , growing into a network of more than 1,000 partners and operating in 14 countries/states.
• Circular economy: Our SCALE 360 initiative is reducing the environmental impacts of value chains within the fashion, food, plastics and electronics industries, positively impacting over 100,000 people in 60 circular economy interventions globally.

Want to know more about our centre’s impact or get involved? Contact us .

2. The world's oceans have broken temperature records every single day for a whole year

Data from the EU's Copernicus Climate Service shows the world's oceans are at serious risk from a record-breaking year of heat , with some days experiencing huge margins of difference, the BBC reports.

Caused by intersecting factors, including planet-warming gases and El Niño, the increasing temperatures of our seas have had drastic consequences for marine life resulting in a new wave of coral bleaching.

Copernicus also confirmed that April was the warmest on record for global air temperatures, making it the 11th record-breaking month in a row.

The world's oceans absorb around a quarter of the carbon dioxide that humans produce, as well as 90% of the excess heat produced. However, they are increasingly feeling the heat.

The average surface temperature of the global oceans began to accelerate far above the long-term norm from March 2023, hitting a record high in August.

3. News in brief: Other top nature and climate stories this week

Biodiversity loss is the biggest environmental driver of infectious disease outbreaks , according to a new study published in Nature , The Guardian reports . Of the five global change drivers analyzed, loss of species was determined to put the world most at risk of widespread disease outbreaks – followed by climate change and the introduction of non-native species.

Venezuela is thought to be the first country to have lost all of its glaciers in modern times. Once home to six of them, the country has now lost its last remaining glacier - the Humboldt Glacier, also known as La Corona – after it shrunk so much that scientists have reclassified it as an ice field.

Following a rapid rise in wind and solar power, renewable energy accounted for more than 30% of the world’s electricity for the first time in 2023 , found climate thinktank Ember.

Poorer countries must be more transparent about their progress on cutting emissions and climate spending to support their calls for vast sums of climate finance, says the president of global climate negotiations.

After experiencing the worst drought in five decades, Costa Rica has announced an electricity rationing plan , as the severe lack of rainfall hampers the efficiency of its hydroelectric plants.

4. More on the nature and climate crisis on Agenda

The automotive industry is responsible for 10% of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions as the producer of 80 million vehicles annually. As environmental concerns mount, find out how the sector is navigating the sustainability drive.

Emerging technologies like Augmented and Virtual Reality can bolster climate action efforts, find out how they're offering new ways for us and our leaders to connect with the climate crisis and its solution s .

Climate change is predicted to cut average incomes by almost 20%, with more frequent and extreme weather events predicted to cause $38 trillion of destruction every year by the middle of the 21st century. Find out more .

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Global warming conclusion.

Global warming is not something to take lightly. The oceans are warming, the polar ice caps are melting, and greenhouse gas levels are at an all-time high. These are just some of the things that the claims-makers for the global warming cause have said. The science has proven them right. So, the ultimate claim is that humans are a large factor in the increased rate of global warming. There are claims-makers of all kinds fighting about whether that is true or not. The solutions proposed deal with a cleaner world, while the deniers will opt to do nothing.  This issue has turned political, and it seems like nothing gets done until someone who believes in global warming is in charge. Right now, that is not the case. This issue will continue to get worse until there is no turning back. Hopefully society can come to a consensus to try and inhibit global warming. This is the only way to keep the place we live healthy.

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