Kategori : ENERGY AGENDA NEWS, ENERGY EFFICIENCY NEWS - Tarih : 09 August 2021
At the 54th Session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the much awaited Summary Report for Policymakers (SPM) was accepted. The summary report prepared by the 1st Working Group (Working Group 1, WGI) to contribute to the 6th Evaluation Report is titled “Climate Change 2021: Physical Science Foundation”.
The study, prepared by the 1st Working Group (WGI), operating within the scope of the Evaluation Report, was approved by 234 scientists and 195 governments. The study has been ongoing since the 5th Assessment Report (AR5) published by the IPCC in 2014 and the milestone 1.5°C Special Report (SR1.5), 
which brings together the most up-to-date data and analysis in climate science. It is considered the most important update.
The declaration presented to the public by the 1st Working Group was accepted at the two-week plenary session held virtually between July 26 and August 6, 2021. The report, in which government representatives examined each line in communication with the authors of the report, was approved following the plenary session, which lasted 2 weeks.
The first draft of the 1st Working Group report was reviewed by 750 experts and 23,462 review comments were submitted to the draft. The second draft received 51,387 review comments after reviewing government representatives and 1,279 experts. In the final distribution of the Summary Report for Decision Makers to governments, 47 government representatives made more than 3,000 comments. The report references more than 14,000 scientific articles.
Key findings
– Scientists have no doubt that the planet is warming due to human activities. As a result of human activities, rapid and large-scale changes have occurred in the planet’s climate. Some of these effects are irreversible.
– Attribution science provides evidence of humanity’s impact on the climate system. Man-made emissions are seen as the main culprit for changing the planet and making it less stable.
– It is predicted that the planet will warm at least 1.5°C in all realized scenarios. Even in the scenario where the most ambitious steps are taken within the scope of emission reduction, by the 2030s, the planet warms by 1.5°C, again exceeding 1.6°C in these years, but at the end of the century the temperatures fall to 1.4°C again.
– Scientists clearly demonstrate the need to combat greenhouse gases other than CO2 in the near term. Emissions of methane gas, which has a high greenhouse effect, are of particular concern in this context.
– It is predicted that natural life on Earth will suffer due to further warming. It is therefore argued that the capacity of land and ocean ecosystems has limited impact in helping us solve the climate problem.
– If we want to stop warming, decision makers need to implement net zero emissions plans. Technologies for storing carbon dioxide outside the atmosphere are among the important tools of net zero emission plans. However, it is stated that the use of these technologies will only benefit if accompanied by rapid and deep emission reductions.
– Carbon budget projections, a simplified way of assessing the additional CO2 burden the atmosphere can handle, have been improved since previous reports. But improvements in scientific calculations show that there is no large-scale change in the remaining carbon budget.
Human impact on climate
– Scientists say that it is certain that climate change is caused by us. The widespread and rapid change in the climate system due to warming occurs as a result of human influence (A.1, page 5).
– Human impact has warmed the climate at an unprecedented rate in the last 2000 years (Figure SPMS 1).
– These statements, based on certainty in accordance with previous IPCC assessments, suggest in the Summary Report for Decision Makers that climate change is driven by the rise in greenhouse gas concentrations since about 1750. This shows that climate change is unequivocally caused by human activities (A1.1, page 5).
– The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere in 2019 was higher than at any time in 2 million years. Concentrations of the important greenhouse gases methane and nitrous oxide were higher than at any time in the 800,000-year period (A.2.1, page 9).
– There is an increase in the heating rate. Since 1970, global surface temperatures have risen faster than 50-year periods in the last 2,000 years (A.2.2, page 9).
– Human-induced emissions are responsible for almost all of the global warming (Footnote 11 and A.1.3, page 6).
