The first IPCC report published in August, which highlighted the acceleration of global warming, had caused an earthquake.

The reply is coming soon, since the UN climate experts are meeting from Monday for a second opus on the impacts of global warming.

The thousands of scientific studies on which the consensus of hundreds of IPCC authors is based leave no room for doubt.

“Yes, we are moving towards increasingly high risks, in all sectors, almost in all regions”, explains Alexandre Magnan, researcher at the French institute IDDRI.

“But how many years has the IPCC been saying this!

So here we are going to say it again, but will it radically change the way economic actors, political actors, the population see the future?

I do not know.

Will it raise awareness?

I hope so,” he continues, as states are called upon to step up their ambition in the fight against global warming by the next UN climate conference (COP27) in November.

Record fires, floods and heat

The conclusions of the August report were very grim: the threshold of +1.5°C compared to the pre-industrial era – the most optimistic objective of the Paris agreement – ​​could be reached around 2030, i.e. ten years earlier than estimated, threatening new "unprecedented" disasters for humanity, "unquestionably" responsible for global warming.

The consequences on food security, health, cities, population displacements, or even on biodiversity and ecosystems, as well as the measures taken to adapt to these changes will be at the heart of the new report.

While the planet has so far warmed by around 1.1°C and the past seven years have been the hottest on record, the world is seeing with its own eyes the disasters already at work.

Like last year with the flames ravaging the American West, Greece or Turkey, waves submerging regions of Germany or China, or a thermometer that approaches 50 ° C in Canada.

A preliminary version of the IPCC report on the impacts, which AFP had obtained last June, showed that life on Earth as we know it will inevitably be transformed, in the short term.

Faced with this prospect and the need to reduce emissions by almost 50% by 2030 to stay below +1.5°C, the world promised at COP26 in Glasgow in November to accelerate the fight against global warming, evoking for the first time the responsibility of coal.

Commitments that are too soft and not fast enough for experts and NGOs.

Thus, while each tenth of a degree multiplies the dramatic consequences, the planet is still heading towards a "catastrophic" warming of 2.7°C according to the UN.

A third component on the reduction of greenhouse gases for April

It is on February 28 that the IPCC will unveil its new assessment, after two weeks of virtual meeting of the 195 Member States which will sift, line by line, word by word, the "summary for decision-makers", a politically sensitive digest of the thousands pages of the scientific report.

Besides the litany of catastrophic and anxiety-provoking impacts, a ray of hope could come from the adaptation component which should be more solution-oriented to prepare for the impact.

But "there are limits to adaptation and the world will not be able to adapt to climate change that is out of control", underlines Rachel Cleetus, of the organization Union of Concerned Scientists.

“We have only a limited range of choices allowing us to go into the future in a productive way”, adds Ed Carr, researcher at the American University of Clark and one of the authors of the report.

“With each day of delay, some of these choices become more difficult, or disappear (…) That is the urgency”.

A third IPCC report, devoted to solutions for reducing greenhouse gases, is scheduled for April.

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