IPCC report: climate change felt 'on all continents and across the oceans'
Source: The Guardian
IPCC report: climate change felt 'on all continents and across the oceans'
Suzanne Goldenberg in Yokohama
theguardian.com, Friday 28 March 2014 12.28 GMT
Climate change has already left its mark "on all continents and across the oceans", damaging food crops, spreading disease, and melting glaciers, according to the leaked text of a blockbuster UN climate science report due out on Monday.
Government officials and scientists are gathered in Yokohama this week to wrangle over every line of a summary of the report before the final wording is released on Monday – the first update in seven years.
But governments have already signed off on the critical finding that climate change is already having an effect, and that even a small amount of warming in the future could lead to "abrupt and irreversible changes", according to documents seen by the Guardian.
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Some parts of the world could soon be at a tipping point. For others, that tipping point has already arrived. "Both warm water coral reef and Arctic ecosystems are already experiencing irreversible regime shifts," the approved version of the report will say.
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Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/mar/28/ipcc-report-climate-change-report-human-natural-systems