In IPCC report, message for India

The latest IPCC report, while flagging the same concerns as previous ones, is now backed up by more data than ever. The human contribution to rising temperatures is clearer, and the 1.5°C warming closer.

Every few years, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) produces assessment reports that are the most comprehensive scientific evaluations of the state of earth’s climate.
Set up in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), the IPCC does not itself engage in scientific research. Instead, it asks scientists from around the world to go through all the relevant scientific literature related to climate change and draw up the logical conclusions.
The IPCC reports are created by three working groups of scientists.
- Working Group-I, deals with the scientific basis for climate change;
- Working Group-II looks at the likely impacts, vulnerabilities and adaptation issues;
- Working Group-III deals with actions that can be taken to combat climate change.
The assessment reports are the most widely-accepted scientific opinion about climate change. They form the basis for government policies to tackle climate change, and also provide the scientific foundation for the international climate change negotiations.

With a warning that a 1.5 degree warming was likely even before 2040, IPCC has tried to make a case, much stronger than before, for immediate cuts on global greenhouse gas emissions.
For India, it is likely to translate into increased pressure to agree to a net-zero target, a deadline by which it should be able to bring down its emissions to a level that equals the absorptions made by its carbon sinks, like forests.
The IPCC report said that a global net-zero by 2050 was the minimum required to keep the temperature rise to 1.5 degree Celsius. Without India, this would not be possible. Even China, the world’s biggest emitter, has a net-zero goal for 2060.
The IPCC report could also lead to renewed demands that all countries update their climate action plans, called nationally-determined contributions or NDCs in official language.
Under the Paris Agreement, every country has submitted an NDC, listing the climate actions they intend to take by 2025 or 2030. These NDCs have to be updated with stronger action, mandatorily, every five years from 2025.

The worst impacts of climate change are projected to manifest in extreme events — rainfall, drought, heat-waves, cyclones and others — and the frequency of such events is expected to rise sharply. In a way, extreme events would no longer also remain rare. They are likely to get normalised very soon.
With every additional amount of global warming, the planet will see greater changes in the climate. Every additional half degree of warming will cause an increase in the intensity and frequency of hot extremes, heavy precipitation and drought.
At 2 degrees of global warming, heat extremes would more often reach critical tolerance thresholds for agriculture and human health. At a global scale, extreme daily rainfall events would intensify by about 7% for each additional degree Celsius of global warming
A new element in the sixth Assessment report is the discussion over “compound events”, two or more climate change-induced events happening back to back, triggering each other, or occurring simultaneously.
A recent event in Uttarakhand, involving heavy rainfall, landslides, snow avalanche, and flooding, is a good example of a compound event.

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