Earth Today | World responds to first draft of special report on 1.5°C global warming
Published:Wednesday | November 8, 2017 | 12:00 AMPetre Williams-Raynor
THE NEARLY 13,000 comments from expert reviewers worldwide on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC's) first draft of the special report on global warming of 1.5°C has put to bed any lingering doubts over its importance.
"The comments were comprehensive and indicate there is significant interest in the report and what it will suggest for a diverse set of stakeholders," noted Professor Michael Taylor, one of the report's coordinating lead authors, who was in Sweden last month to work on addressing the comments.
That meeting, he said, provided the various chapter authors the opportunity to look at how to respond to comments "and put us on the path to produce the second draft which is to be submitted by year end".
According to an October 24 press release published on the IPCC's website, 2,000 experts from 124 countries registered to be reviewers.
"Overall, the First Order Draft of the Special Report on 1.5 degrees C attracted 12,895 review comments. These comments came from 489 expert reviewers representing 61 different countries," it said.
"Based on citizenship, half of expert reviewers were from Europe (51 per cent). North America, Central America and the Caribbean accounted for a further 19 per cent; Asia, 13 per cent; South America, seven per cent; South West Pacific, six per cent; and Africa five per cent," it added.
Women also featured well in those numbers.
"A third (31 per cent) of expert reviewers were female and two-thirds (69 per cent) were male," the release said.
EXCITING TIMES
For Taylor, it is exciting times.
"There is a general excitement to see how the document is shaping and is being shaped by the expertise of the many scientists who are involved, the expertise of the global community and the comments, and to see where the work is going," the physicist and head of the Mona Climate Studies Group at the University of the West Indies told The Gleaner.
"We know that climate change is an issue and the question this document is trying to answer is whether 1.5 is a good target. The sum of the scientists' findings is what does 1.5 mean for the world and what does a higher target mean? And there is a distinction between the 1.5 and a two degrees in many areas, not in every area," he added.
The report, for many, is vital - and not only given the Paris Agreement which aims to hold "the increase in the global average temperature to well below two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, recognising that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change".
Small-island developing states, such as those of the Caribbean, have consistently held that a world warmed beyond 1.5 could severely impair their survivability, given climate threats, such as sea level rise and extreme weather events, the likes of hurricanes recently experienced.