UN Report Highlights Impacts of Climate Change

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s latest document discusses the dangers of a warming world, but also indicates opportunities for adaptation to the sweeping changes to come.

Written byBob Grant

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Coastal erosion is but one of the effects of climate change.WIKIMEDIA, USFWS/STEVE HILLEBRANDClimate change is already reducing crop yields and disrupting ocean fisheries, and the continued perturbations will hit poor populations hardest, according to a report released yesterday (March 31) from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The report is the latest from the IPCC, which last released such a document in 2007.

“We live in an era of man-made climate change,” said Vicente Barros, co-chair of the IPCC working group II that authored the report, in a statement. “In many cases, we are not prepared for the climate-related risks that we already face. Investments in better preparation can pay dividends both for the present and for the future.”

The report highlighted current impacts of climate change, assembled with help from hundreds of scientists from all over the globe, including reduced food production, more frequent wildfires, coastal erosion, and droughts.

Future perturbations could include even more drastic reductions in food production—half of the thousands of studies drawn upon to compile the report a 10 percent or more drop in crop yields by the end of this century—more extreme ...

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Meet the Author

Bob Grant
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From 2017 to 2022, Bob Grant was Editor in Chief of The Scientist, where he started in 2007 as a Staff Writer. Before joining the team, he worked as a reporter at Audubon and earned a master’s degree in science journalism from New York University. In his previous life, he pursued a career in science, getting a bachelor’s degree in wildlife biology from Montana State University and a master’s degree in marine biology from the College of Charleston in South Carolina. Bob edited Reading Frames and other sections of the magazine.
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