4 shocking discoveries about climate change

Humans are almost certainly to blame for global warming and its consequences could be worse than we imagine - according to a leaked draft of the latest climate report from the United Nations.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is expected to release the first parts of the report next month. It will be the organization’s fifth climate report. Although the report has not yet been finalized, details from leaked drafts suggest it will issue dire warnings about the threats posed by climate change. Here are four key findings.

Humans are responsible for 95%

The biggest takeaway from the report is that scientists are more convinced than ever that humans are causing climate change. Not only is it real, the report says, but there is a 95% certainty that human activity is driving climate change.

The level of certainty has increased by 5% since six years ago, when the most recent IPCC report said there was a 90% certainty that humans are causing global warming. This is an increase from what scientists predicted in 2001 (66%) and 1995 (50%).

The biggest culprit: Burning fossil fuels — which the report says has caused global temperatures to rise significantly since 1950.

Melting ice could cause sea levels to rise by about 0.9 meters over the next century. (Photo: theatlanticwire.com)

Sea levels could rise about 0.9 meters by 2100

In a warning about one of the most worrying impacts of global warming, the report said sea levels could rise by more than 3 feet this century. Rising temperatures are already melting snow and ice, raising global average sea levels, altering some weather extremes, and the problem is “much worse than previously thought.”

Six years ago, the last report predicted sea levels would rise, at worst, by about 58.42cm, or less than 0.6m.

The rate of temperature increase has slowed since 1998.

Even as greenhouse gas emissions continue to break records, the IPCC report confirms another unusual trend: The rate at which temperatures are rising worldwide is actually slowing. While temperatures are still rising, they have been rising at a slower rate since around 1998, the report says.

The reasons behind this slowdown are unclear. The report offers several possibilities with “medium confidence,” including increased levels of volcanic ash in the atmosphere, changes in the solar cycle, and a theory that the ocean is absorbing more energy than it used to.

In July, British scientists said they had determined that the ocean is absorbing more heat as it slowly sinks to deeper waters. Newly melted Arctic ice may also increase the overall water volume, creating more liquid to absorb heat that would otherwise have a direct impact on air temperatures.

No matter what, the climate is still warming.

Even if the world found a way to immediately halt greenhouse gas emissions, the report says warming would continue for “many centuries.” That’s because about 20 percent of carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere will remain there for millennia to come.

As a result, according to the report, a “large proportion” of climate change will be “irreversible on human timescales.”

In stark terms, the report adds, there is a “very high risk” that global temperatures will rise by more than 2 or 3 degrees Celsius this century. Scientists have previously cited 2 degrees as a critical threshold beyond which ecosystems could collapse and the planet would suffer catastrophic, irreversible damage.

According to Khoahoc.tv