Human influence on the planet's climate system is clear and is having "widespread and consequential impacts on human and natural systems" on all continents and all oceans, says a draft report from a United Nations science panel out today.
"Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia," the report states. "The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, and sea level has risen," it reports.
Changes in many extreme weather and climate events have been seen in the past six decades or so, including fewer cold temperature extremes and more hot temperature extremes.
The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) created the synthesis report, which is the final part of the group's Fifth Assessment Report.
The IPCC is a group of researchers and scientists from around the world that monitor recent climate science, and release reports every several years about the latest scientific findings.
The report states that the cause of this climate change is due to man-made emissions of greenhouse gases, which are "the highest in history" and likely "unprecedented in at least the last 800,000 years."
The recent uptick in carbon dioxide levels is correlated with a rise in global temperatures of about 1.5 degrees since the early 1800s.
"Without additional mitigation, and even with adaptation, warming by the end of the 21st century will lead to high to very high risk of severe, widespread and irreversible impacts globally, " it states.
The report goes on to say that if carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases continue to be emitted at the current rate, it's likely that by 2050 temperatures will rise by about another 3.6 degrees, when compared with the temperatures from 1986 to 2005.
By 2100, temperatures could be about 6.7 degrees warmer. Though it wouldn't occur for hundreds of years, the huge sheet of ice over Greenland could melt entirely, leading to as much as a 23-foot rise in world ocean levels, leaving many coastal cities underwater.
This 127-page draft report, obtained by USA TODAY Tuesday, could change before its official release in Copenhagen in October.
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