Leaked report reveals big climate change assessment

The leaked draft report from the IPCC has been grabbing headlines all over the world this week

The forthcoming world’s most comprehensive report on climate change which is published by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) revealed that it is more confident that humans are behind global warming.

According to the leaked draft report, scientists are more convinced that humans are causing climate change. The authors of the report claim at least 95% with certainty that human activity is causing the world to heat up.

This is an increase of five percentage compared to the previous report released six years ago. The main cause has been attributed to burning of fossil fuels, which the report says has caused global temperatures to increase significantly since 1950.

Another shocking finding is that the report warns that sea levels could rise at least by three feet by 2100. The report states that rising temperatures have already melted snow and ice, raised global mean sea level, and changed some climate extremes.

The last report by the IPCC predicted sea levels would rise by about 23 inches or less than two feet in that same time period.

The draft report which is more than 3,000 pages will be released in three parts over the next 14 months. The first part covers the physical science of climate change. The second part will concentrate on the impacts of climate change and how to adapt to it and the third part will examine ways to curd the warming.

The draft report also revealed that though greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase the rate of global temperature increase is actually slowing.

It says that while the temperatures are still climbing it has been doing so at a slower pace since about 1998; however the reason behind this is unclear.

The report attributes this to various possibilities with medium confidence such as an increase in volcanic ash lingering in the atmosphere, changes in the sun’s solar cycle, and a theory that oceans are now absorbing more energy compared to the past.

The draft report also states that warming would still continue for many centuries because an estimated 20% of carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere will remain there for the next millennium.

It states that a large fraction of climate change is thus irreversible on a human time scale. The report adds that there is a high risk global temperatures will rise by more than two degrees Celsius this century.

A two degree Celsius increase, according to scientists is a potentially critical threshold beyond which the delicate ecosystems could break down and the planet could suffer massive irreversible damage.