When presenting the world climate report, there is always talk of a short window of time that is closing quickly.

It is only possible to “secure a livable and sustainable future for everyone” if we act quickly now.

The second partial report of the sixth assessment report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was presented on Monday, shows the consequences of climate change.

According to this, 3.3 to 3.6 billion people worldwide live in severely affected regions.

Another quarter of humanity must at least temporarily reckon with drastic changes due to global warming.

"Dangerous and far-reaching destruction of nature and the living environments of billions of people" are already being caused by man-made climate change, according to the IPCC.

Joachim Müller-Jung

Editor in the feuilleton, responsible for the "Nature and Science" department.

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Timo Steppat

Editor in Politics.

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Exceeding the maximum warming of 1.5 degrees targeted in the Paris climate agreement since the beginning of industrialization would multiply the damage in cities, agriculture and nature worldwide.

We are currently at a global temperature rise of almost 1.2 degrees.

With the report of the IPCC working group two, as in the first partial report six months ago, the 1.5-degree limit is marked as the decisive threshold for a climate change that can hardly be controlled in many places.

The report shows that countries are still doing far too little when it comes to climate change adaptation.

There is a significant gap between what is needed today and what is on the way.

More heat waves and droughts in Europe

Over the past three years, more than 200 scientists around the world have compiled all the data on the consequences, vulnerability and adaptation measures and evaluated them in a report spanning more than a thousand pages.

In the now presented thirty-five-page "summary for political decision-makers" it is stated that increasing climate dangers threaten or will become noticeable in the next two decades if climate change is not quickly limited.

The consequences are massive and difficult to foresee in their entirety.

In Asia, for example, climate change is accelerating the spread of diseases such as dengue fever and malaria.

Europe too – here especially the south – must increasingly expect heat waves and drought.

Due to rising temperatures, more Europeans prone to heat stress could die in the future.

The catches of fishermen in Africa could drop significantly, which is why parts of the population lack a crucial source of protein and a significant increase in malnutrition is to be expected.

Even if global temperature rise were only to temporarily exceed 1.5 degrees and then drop again, this would result in serious and sometimes irreversible damage to ecosystems and societies.

The report separates short-term climate change impacts up to 2040 from medium- and long-term impacts.

Above all, these short-term consequences of the currently greatly accelerated warming with much more drastic effects than long thought have been underestimated so far, as the IPCC report makes clear.

Take agriculture as an example: "Every tenth of a degree of warming above 1.5 degrees will lead to escalating economic damage and more frequent regional crop failures," says Hermann Lotze-Campen from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

The key risks for Europe

"The risk thresholds," summarizes one of the two main authors of the new IPCC report, Hans-Otto Pörtner from the Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven, "are already reached at significantly lower temperature values".

Above all, Pörtner complains about the still large gap between the knowledge about the risks of climate change, which have also accelerated further in the past eight years, and the implementation in climate policy and precautionary action.

Particular emphasis is placed on the close link between climate change and the risks to the ecosystems on which a large part of the world's population depends.

It must be ensured as quickly as possible that between 30 and 50 percent of the earth's surface is protected from further exploitation.

The director of the UN Environment Program UNEP Inger Andersen said: "Nature can be our salvation, but only if we save it." Because natural areas could help to mitigate the consequences of climate change and served to protect the climate.

Danger of tenfold increase in coastal damage

The paleobiologist Daniela Schmidt from the University of Bristol, who is also a co-author of the report like several other German scientists, emphasizes that according to the IPCC analyses, "Europe would be more than averagely affected by climate change" if the temperature rise were not slowed down quickly and consistently.

Four “key risks” have been identified for Europe: heat waves that would double or triple the risk of severe damage to health and deaths at three degrees of warming, around the current trend.

In addition, there is heat stress for food crops, as well as water scarcity and the risk of flooding, which alone would lead to a tenfold increase in coastal damage by 2100 if the current warming continues.

One of the scenarios played out in the report concludes that up to 183 million additional people could suffer from malnutrition by 2050.