As the world's foremost expert on climate change prepares to warn of an urgent and catastrophic threat to the global climate system, scientists believe the fires, floods, and extreme weather witnessed throughout the world in recent months are only a taste of what may be expected if global warming takes hold.

Less than three months before crucial UN meetings that could determine the future course of life on Earth, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will release a major report, the most thorough assessment ever.

The results, finalized on Saturday night after an intense two weeks of online discussion by experts from across the world and reflect eight years of study by renowned scientists, have already been previewed by policymakers.

Creating Practical and Achievable Strategies

Greenpeace UK policy director Doug Parr stated that governments must heed the warnings. "Practical, financed, and achievable strategies [by governments] to keep us below the ostensibly safe [heating] limits are practically non-existent. Decades ago, urgent climate action was required; now, we are running out of time. As the host of the UN climate conference, the UK government has a major duty to ensure that world leaders sign up to measures that not just put the brakes on the climate catastrophe, but slam it into reverse."

The IPCC, which is comprised of hundreds of the world's leading climate scientists, issues thorough assessments every seven years, with this being the sixth since 1988.

This one, however, will be different: previous research has shown that the 2020s are a critical decade in which greenhouse gas emissions must be halved to keep warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, which has been established as the threshold of safety in previous IPCC reports and is the lower of two goals in the 2015 Paris agreement.

According to Michael Mann, a prominent professor of atmospheric science at Pennsylvania State University, this is the last IPCC report that can significantly impact policy terms before we surpass 1.5 degrees Celsius and the Paris Agreement's goals.

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Worsening Calamities

"Climate change is increasingly amplifying weather extremes like the ones we've seen this summer - droughts, heatwaves, wildfires, floods, and superstorms," he added. "Climate change's effects are no longer subtle. Instead, we can see them unfolding in real-time in the shape of unprecedented extreme weather events."

In recent months, there have been fires in the United States, heatwaves in northern latitudes, and disastrous floods in China and Europe. Scientists warn that unless climate change is halted, this might become the norm.

"The observations this summer show that some impacts [predicted in previous IPCC climate assessments] appear to be underestimated, but we can't know if the devastation of summer 2021 is the new normal without a few more years of data," said Simon Lewis, professor of global change science at University College London.

"But we do know that if emissions continue to grow, climatic consequences will become increasingly severe."

Grim Prediction

He forewarned that the ramifications would be severe. "It's important to remember that we all live in areas that have evolved through decades and centuries to adapt to a certain environment. The really terrifying aspect of the climate issue is that "every single achievement of every human culture on Earth took place in a climate that no longer exists," he explained.

"When world leaders meet in Glasgow in November, the emphasis is on them to agree on comprehensive and attainable measures to cut emissions immediately, as well as strategies to adapt to climate impacts."

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