- Monaco take top spot in Ligue 1 with win at Rennes
- Madrid beat Villarreal to level Liga leaders Barca
- Thuram treble fires Inter past Torino and up to second
- 'Fight': defiant Trump jets in to site of rally shooting
- Mexico City's new mayor sworn in with pledges on water, housing
- Israel on alert ahead of Hamas attack anniversary
- Guardians maul Tigers in MLB playoff series opener
- Macron criticises Israel on Gaza, Lebanon operations
- French rugby player whistled but 'serene' on return amid ongoing rape case
- Retegui hat-trick fires five-star Atalanta to hammering of Genoa
- Heavyweights Australia, England off to World Cup winning starts
- Visiting UN refugee agency chief decries 'terrible crisis' in Lebanon
- Spinners come to party as England defeat Bangladesh at T20 World Cup
- Search continues for missing in deadly Bosnia floods
- Man City sink Fulham to get title bid back on track
- France's Auradou whistled on Pau return in Perpignan loss amid ongoing rape case
- A 'forgotten' valley in storm-hit North Carolina, desperate for help
- Arsenal hit back in style after Southampton scare
- Hezbollah heir apparent Safieddine out of contact after strikes
- Liverpool stay top of Premier League as Arsenal, Man City win
- In dank Tour of Emilia, Pogacar shines in rainbow jersey
- DR Congo launches mpox vaccination drive, hoping to curb outbreak
- Trump returns to site of failed assassination
- Careless Leverkusen held to Bundesliga draw
- O'Brien's 'superstar' Kyprios posts landmark win on Arc weekend
- Liverpool suffer Alisson injury blow
- Habosi helps Racing beat Vannes before Auradou's playing return
- Thousands march in London in support of Palestinians, 1 year after Oct 7
- Israel readying response to Iran missile attack
- Schutt, Mooney help Australia beat Sri Lanka in Women's T20 World Cup
- Liverpool extend Premier League lead with win at Palace
- Djokovic 'shakes rust off' to make third round of Shanghai Masters
- 'Imperfect' PSG fighting on all fronts - Luis Enrique
- Struggling Pakistan look to thwart adaptable England
- Child 'trampled to death' in asylum seekers' Channel crossing: minister
- Gauff fights back to set up Beijing final against Muchova
- Guardiola claims Premier League won't delay season for Man City
- Israel to mark October 7 attack as Gaza war spreads
- Gauff fights back to reach China Open final
- Recovering Stokes ruled out of first Pakistan Test
- Hezbollah battles troops on border as Israel pounds Lebanon
- Alcaraz, Sinner breeze into third round of Shanghai Masters
- Bagnaia wins Japan MotoGP sprint to cut Martin's lead
- Alcaraz breezes into third round of Shanghai Masters
- Gaza cultural heritage brought to light in Geneva
- 'Bullet for democracy': Trump returns to site of rally shooting
- Italy targets climate activists in 'anti-Gandhi' demo clampdown
- South Korean cult-horror series 'Hellbound' returns at BIFF
- Nepalis fear more floods as climate change melts glaciers
- Honduras arrests environmentalist's alleged murderer
UN science report to sound deafening alarm on climate
Nearly 200 nations kick off a virtual meeting Monday to finalise what promises to be a harrowing scientific overview of accelerating climate impacts that will highlight the urgent need to cut emissions -- and prepare for the challenges ahead.
The world is already feeling the effects of global warming, driven largely by the burning of fossil fuels, with last year seeing a cascade of deadly floods, heatwaves and wildfires across four continents.
The upcoming update from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is set to outline in stark detail what the best available science tells us are the impacts of the changing climate -- past, present and future.
During a two-week gathering, diplomats and scientists will vet, line-by-line, an all-important Summary for Policymakers, boiling down an underlying report thousands of pages long.
An early draft of the IPCC review seen by AFP in 2021 makes clear the extent to which devastating climate impacts are a here-and-now reality.
In some cases this means that adapting to intolerably hot days, flash flooding and storm surges has become a matter of life and death.
"Even if we find solutions for reducing carbon emissions, we will still need solutions to help us adapt," said Alexandre Magnan, a researcher at the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations in Paris and a co-author of the report, without commenting on the report's findings.
Species extinction, ecosystem collapse, crippling health impacts from disease and heat, water shortages -- all will accelerate in the coming decades even if the carbon emissions that drive global warming are drawn down, the report is likely to find.
"This is a real moment of reckoning," said Rachel Cleetus, Climate and energy policy director at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
"This not just more scientific projections about the future," she told AFP. "This is about extreme events and slow-onset disasters that people are experience right now."
- Planning ahead -
The report comes three months after pledges at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow to halt deforestation, curb methane emissions, phase down coal-fired power and boost financial aid to developing countries.
IPCC assessments are divided into three sections, each with its own volunteer "working group" of hundreds of scientists.
In August 2021, the first instalment on physical science found that global heating is virtually certain to pass 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), probably within a decade.
That is the heating limit envisioned in the Paris Agreement, beyond which impacts become more severe.
This second report on impacts and adaptation, due for release after the two-week meeting, is likely to underscore that vulnerability to extreme weather events -- even when they are made worse by global warming -- can be reduced by better planning.
This is not only true in the developing world, noted Imperial College professor Friederike Otto, pointing to massive flooding in Germany last year that killed scores and caused billions in damage.
"Even without global warming there would have been a huge rainfall event in a densely populated geography where the rivers flood very easily," said Otto, a pioneer in the science of quantifying the extent to which climate change makes extreme weather events more likely or intense.
- Hard choices -
The latest report will also likely zero in on how climate change is widening already yawning gaps in inequality, both between regions and within nations.
This means that the people least responsible for climate change are the ones suffering the most from its impacts.
Not only is this unjust, experts and advocates say, it is a barrier to tackling the problem.
"I do not think there are pathways to sustainable development that do not substantively address equity issues," said Clark University professor Edward Clark, a lead author of one of the reports chapters.
Earth's surface has warmed 1.1 degrees Celsius since the 19th century.
The 2015 Paris deal calls for capping global warming at "well below" 2C, and ideally the more ambitious limit of 1.5C.
This report is sure to reinforce that goal.
"There are limits -- for ecosystems and human systems -- to adaptation," said Cleetus. "We cannot adjust to runaway climate change."
Indeed, the report will probably emphasise more than ever before dangerous "tipping points", invisible temperature trip wires in the climate system for irreversible and potentially catastrophic change.
Some of them -- such as the melting of permafrost housing twice as much carbon as in the atmosphere -- could fuel global warming all on their own.
At the same time, scientists are only just beginning to get a handle on so-called cascading and compound impacts -- how Greenland's melting ice sheet, for example, affects ocean currents across the globe.
"There is a finite set of choices we can make that would move us productively into the future," said Carr. "Every day we wait and delay, some of those choices get harder or go away."
B.Godinho--PC