How hot is the Earth really gonna get?

You might not be a science geek, but this piece of news has been virtually all over the Internet, so it’s been almost impossible to miss it. That’s right, I am talking about the latest IPCC climate report.

I don’t know about you, but to me, it really was a bucket of cold water. I mean, we’ve been hearing about climate change for years, but until now it has always been something that MAY happen in some distant and rather undefined future. Now, they are telling us it is close to inevitable. Our planet is almost at a point of no return when it comes to temperature rise.

What is the Greenhouse Effect?

Let’s begin by reviewing the very basics: why the Earth’s temperature is going up in the first place? I’m sure you’ve heard about the Greenhouse Effect, haven’t you?

Even though we tend to associate it only with human activity and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, the greenhouse effect is a natural process that has been occurring on our planet forever, helping to keep it warm and making it possible for plants to photosynthesize sunlight, for the ocean water to evaporate, and in consequence – for the humans to thrive.

However, the excessive use of fossil fuels such as coal, natural gas, and oil that our society has exploited for its development, has damaged the fragile natural balance, and has turned our planet into a real greenhouse, with the inside temperature getting higher and higher.

The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report – Main Premises

Having clarified that basic fact, let’s go back to our report, shall we? The IPCC acronym stands for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is the institution created by the United Nations to keep an eye on the scientific background of climate change.

It is currently composed of 195 members who make regular assessments of what is happening in terms of the greenhouse effect, glaciers melting, ocean level increasing, floods, droughts, fires, and other worrying changes. If we had to summarize the conclusions the IPCC specialists have reached in the briefest possible way, it would be:

• It can be said without a shred of doubt that the Earth has been getting warmer (by 1.1 °C compared with the nineteenth century) which is something our civilization has not seen for over a hundred thousand years.
• There is overwhelming evidence that proves human activity is responsible for the temperature increase. We’ve reached a critical point, but if we act now, we can still save ourselves and our planet from a major disaster.
• The current estimate of equilibrium climate sensitivity is 3°C, which means we simply cannot allow the temperature to get any higher than that.
• Drastic actions have to be taken now in order to make “deep reductions in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions occur in the coming decades”.

Projections for the Future

The already-named “Code Red for Humanity” presents different future temperature increase scenarios, depending on how greatly countries will manage to reduce their gas emission.

If you have a closer look at the world map, you can see that it gets more and more frightening as the forecast of global warming becomes progressively higher. Projected annual average temperature change at different levels of global warming, compared to 1850-1900. If the average temperature on our planet reaches 4°C or above, the changes we are going to witness will be truly catastrophic.

If it gets too hot around the North Pole, with all the ice melting, we’ll lose huge pieces of coastlines to floods, including tourist destinations, agricultural areas, and even important cities currently inhabited by millions of people.

Devastating natural disasters will become part of our daily lives. Wildfires, tornados, tsunamis, landslides will wreak havoc. Famine, hyperthermia, drownings – the landscape we are facing is truly apocalyptical. After years and years of studies, scientists are now able to determine with great precision what the most impacted areas will be.

What Can We Do to Avoid the Darkest Scenario?

The bad news, according to the IPCC report, is that certain changes are already irreversible. No matter what we do, glaciers will continue melting for centuries or even millennia. Even if we manage to keep the temperature increase “only” at 1.5 °C, sea levels are still expected to rise by about 2-3 meters over the next couple of millennia.

Having issued their most serious warning so far, the IPCC specialists have also come up with a clear indication of what has to be done to keep climate change at bay and avoid the direst consequences. We have to take drastic measures and we have to act now. Greenhouse-gas emissions must be stopped, and fossil fuels replaced with clean-energy sources (wind, sunlight, and water).

According to Valérie Masson-Delmotte, a climatologist at the Laboratory of Climate and Environmental Sciences in Gif-sur-Yvette, if we manage to reduce global emissions to a net-zero by around 2050, we can still achieve the goal we have proposed ourselves in the 2015 Paris Agreement and keep the temperature increase at 1.5 °C maximum.

The fact that the report was published only three months before the next conference of the Paris Agreement Parties, scheduled for November 2021 in Glasgow, doesn´t seem like a coincidence. All the contrary, it is meant as a wake-up call for the leaders of our nations to reinforce their commitment and take real actions.