The UN is seeking to drive home the dangers of climate change with an incoming report. The report is already in its final draft and will be released during the climate talks in Japan next Monday.
The report is part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) ongoing assessment involving what is currently known about climate change. The completion of the report marks the culmination of the second phase of IPCC's efforts. The first part of the assessment was completed and released fall last year detailing currently available physical evidence supporting the existence of climate change. Moreover, the IPCC's first report also stated that there is a 95 percent probability that climate change is primarily a man-made problem.
"The Working Group II author team assessed thousands of papers to produce a definitive report of the state of knowledge concerning climate-change impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability. Many hundreds of volunteers, in and beyond the author team, approached this work with dedication and deep expertise," said IPCC Working Group II Co-Chair Vicente Barros.
The second report also contains information that regarding potential economic losses due to climate change. Many governments around the world have been seeking more information about possible economic aftereffects of increasing climate change. The latest assessments show that it will take around $100 billion per annum just to address the impact of climate change. Moreover, climate experts say that the possibility of global temperatures rising by 2.5C may have adverse effects on the global production of vital crops like rice, maize and corn. If the predictions come to pass, world gross domestic products may be reduced up to two percent of current yields.
"This report considers consequences of climate changes that have already occurred and the risks across a range of possible futures. It considers every region and many sectors, ranging from oceans to human security. The focus is as much on identifying effective responses as on understanding challenges," said IPCC Working Group II's second Co-Chair Chris Field.
Aside from the second report, the IPCC will also be working on its third and final report, which is scheduled for release sometime next month. The third report seeks to provide up-to-date information about potential ways of reducing the effects of greenhouse gasses and global emissions.
As climate experts meet in Yokohama, Japan, the effects of climate change are already taking its toll on the country hosting the event. As if to demonstrate the contents of the report, rising temperatures are already threatening crop production in a country with very limited planting space. If the current predictions come to pass, the country may be heading for a potential food crisis in the near future.
