11.3.1.5 Special Report: The Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate.11.3.1.4 Special Report: Climate change and Land.11.3.1.3 Special Report: Global Warming of 1.5 ☌.5.1.1 Tipping points and long-term impacts.By themselves, these efforts to adapt cannot avert the risk of severe, widespread and permanent impacts. Some communities may adapt to climate change through better coastline protection, disaster management, and development of more resistant crops. Prevention of deforestation and enhancing forests can help absorb CO 2. Switching to electric vehicles, and to heat pumps for homes and commercial buildings, will further limit emissions. This will involve using more wind and solar energy, phasing out coal, and increasing energy efficiency. Future warming can be reduced (mitigated) by lowering greenhouse gas emissions and removing them from the atmosphere. Responding to these changes involves taking actions to limit the amount of warming, and adapting to them. Additional warming also increases the risk of triggering tipping points, such as the melting of the Greenland ice sheet. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projects even greater impacts as warming continues to 1.5 ☌ and beyond. Many of these impacts are already felt at the current level of warming, which is about 1.2 ☌ (2 ☏). These include sea level rise, and warmer, more acidic oceans. Even if efforts to minimise future warming are successful, some effects will continue for centuries. The World Health Organization calls climate change the greatest threat to global health in the 21st century. Climate change threatens people with food and water scarcity, increased flooding, extreme heat, more disease, and economic loss. In places such as coral reefs, mountains, and the Arctic, many species are forced to relocate or become extinct, as their environment changes. Higher temperatures are also causing more intense storms and other weather extremes. Increased warming in the Arctic has contributed to melting permafrost, glacial retreat and sea ice loss. Deserts are expanding, while heat waves and wildfires are becoming more common. On land, temperatures have risen about twice as fast as the global average. Collectively, these amplify global warming. Temperature rise is also affected by climate feedbacks such as the loss of sunlight-reflecting snow cover, and the release of carbon dioxide from drought-stricken forests. Agriculture, steelmaking, cement production, and forest loss are additional sources. Burning fossil fuels for energy use creates most of these emissions. The main cause is the emission of greenhouse gases, mostly carbon dioxide ( CO 2) and methane. There have been previous periods of climate change, but the current changes are more rapid than any known events in Earth's history. : SPM-7Ĭontemporary climate change includes both the global warming caused by humans, and its impacts on Earth's weather patterns. Natural forces add relatively minor variability.
The main driver for increased global temperatures in the industrial era is human activity. Observed global average temperature change since the pre-industrial era.