In the final installment of a major series of reports, the UN's climate advisory panel claimed yesterday that the world will cross the key 1.5-degree Celsius global warming limit in about a decade, warning that devastating impacts of climate change are hitting faster than expected.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change urged dramatic reductions in planet-heating emissions, stating there is still time to steer global temperatures to within relatively safe limits.
"Rapid and far-reaching transitions across all sectors and systems are necessary to achieve deep and sustained emissions reductions and secure a liveable and sustainable future for all," said the report's "summary for policymakers".
Distilling the weight of scientific knowledge on climate change, the IPCC's work will form the basis of intense political and economic negotiations in the coming years, starting with the UN COP28 climate negotiations in Dubai later this year.
The 36-page summary – a synthesis of six major reports since 2018 represents a "message of hope", the head of the IPCC said in a video interview with the AFP.
"We have know-how, technology, tools, financial resources – everything needed to overcome the climate problems we have known about for so long," Hoesung Lee said. "What's lacking at this point is a strong political will to resolve these issues once and for all."
The IPCC said the world is currently set to reach 1.5C above pre-industrial levels – the more ambitious and safer target of the Paris Agreement – in the early 2030s, which will ratchet up the severity of impacts in the near future.
In response to the report, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said wealthy countries aiming for carbon neutrality in 2050 or beyond should speed up their goal to as close as possible to 2040 in order to "defuse the climate time bomb."
"Humanity is on thin ice – and that ice is melting fast," he said in a video message, likening the IPCC report to "a survival guide for humanity".
The report comes as the world has scrambled to shore up energy security following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, with countries in Europe and Asia turning to heavily polluting coal, even as renewables rise.
While the underlying IPCC reports are compiled by scientists, the summary document is agreed by governments from nearly 200 countries.
Week-long negotiations on that text in Interlaken, Switzerland – which went two full days into overtime – were bogged down by fights over language.
According to observers, negotiators from Saudi Arabia in particular tried to dilute passages that emphasised the central role of fossil fuels in driving global warming.
Last year, a sustained heat wave across Europe caused an intense drought and reportedly was responsible for thousands of deaths. Scientists had pointed to climate change as one of the leading factors and stated thaht similar extreme weather was increasingly likely in the future.