Climate change: UN to reveal landmark IPCC report findings

It will be the most up-to-date assessment of how global warming will change the world in the coming decades.

Scientists say it will likely be bad news – but with “nuggets of optimism”.

And environmental experts have said it will be a “massive wake-up call” to governments to cut emissions.

The last time the IPCC looked at the science of global warming was in 2013 – and scientists believe they have learnt a lot since then.

In recent years, the world has seen record-breaking temperatures, raging wildfires and devastating flooding.

Some papers studied by the panel show that some of the changes humans are inadvertently making to the climate will not be reversed for hundreds or maybe thousands of years.

The IPCC’s findings – which will be revealed at a press conference at 09:00 BST – will also be used during a major summit hosted by the UK in November.

The summit, COP26, which is run by the UN, is seen as a critical moment if climate change is going to be brought under control. Leaders from 196 countries will meet to try and agree on action.

Alok Sharma, the UK minister who is leading the summit, said at the weekend that the world was almost running out of time to avoid catastrophe – and the effects of climate change were already happening.

The intergovernmental panel brings together representatives of world governments who appraise research by scientists. That means all governments buy into the findings.

The last panel was in 2013 and researchers say much has firmed up since then.

Previously, for instance, they were reluctant to ascribe extreme events such as heatwaves and torrential rain to being at least partly down to climate change.

Now in the case of the heatdome in the US in June, they’re confident to say it would have been almost impossible without climate change.

They say the world will continue to get hotter.

It will also – especially in northern Europe – get wetter, though droughts will increase too as weather patterns shifts.