By Liz Fields
The new U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report should serve as a “wake-up call” to governments and society about the role of humans in global warming, scientists say.
“It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century,” the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report, which was published Friday, found.
“This report confirms with even more certainty than in the past — that it is extremely likely that the changes in our climate system for the past half a century are due to human influence,” Michel Jarraud, Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organization, which co-sponsored the IPCC, said in a statement.
“It should serve as yet another wake-up call that our activities today will have a profound impact on society not only for us but for many generations to come,” he said.
More than 800 authors across more than 39 countries contributed to the working group’s 2,500-page assessment, which draws on millions of observations and numerical data from climate model simulations.
The report, which contains the strongest wording yet on the existence of climate change and the role that humans play in contributing to it, states: “Warming in the climate system is unequivocal.”
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Get more information on the IPCC report, including:
Summary for policymakers (36 pp)
Technical Summary (129 pp)
