On 9 August 2021, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued its Sixth Assessment Report on climate change. The last such report was issued in 2013.
The report was not simply a wakeup call. Trends had been pointing to ever-increasing concern for some time; but few people anticipated the extent of change.
The report stated not only is it "unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land" but "the scale of recent changes across the climate system as a whole and the present state of many aspects of the climate system are unprecedented over many centuries to many thousands of years."1
After reviewing the findings of the report, the secretary-general of the United Nations, António Guterres, referred to the report as a “code red for humanity."2
1 Source: IPCC, 2021: Summary for Policymakers. In: Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. [MassonDelmotte, V., P. Zhai, A. Pirani, S. L. Connors, C. Péan, S. Berger, N. Caud, Y. Chen, L. Goldfarb, M. I. Gomis, M. Huang, K. Leitzell, E. Lonnoy, J. B. R. Matthews, T. K. Maycock, T. Waterfield, O. Yelekçi, R. Yu and B. Zhou (eds.)].Cambridge University Press. In Press. For detailed findings, see: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/#SPM
2 McGrath, Matt. "Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'," BBC News, 10 August 2021: Retrieved from: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-58130705
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