IPCC First Assessment - What we can learn from a 30 year old report

30 years have passed since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) produced its First Assessment Report (FAR). How far have we come in the fight against climate change? This post discusses the report by the Working Group II - the one that discusses impacts of climate change.  If you're interested in the report by the Working Group I - the one that discusses the reasons behind climate change - go here.

Working Group II (Impacts)

In the words of the authors themselves, "the responsibility of Working Group II is to describe the environmental and socioeconomic implications of possible climate changes over the next decades caused by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases."

This addresses a pernicious climate myth -- that the IPCC reports are written by scientists alone. I've been told that the world doesn't run like lab simulations and that scientists should not comment on policy matters because economic and social considerations are also important. That is 100% correct! Which is why the IPCC includes researchers from various streams to deliver comments on this multifaceted problem.

The First Assessment Report (FAR) came with a recurrent emphasis on uncertainties. The Working Group II admitted quite clearly:

Were there any meaningful insights that could be found within the cognizance of these uncertainties? The answer is Yes.

Arctic Amplification

The report pointed out that different regions would heat up to different extents -- "namely a smaller increase of half the global mean in the tropical regions and a larger increase of twice the global mean in the polar regions". This is called Arctic Amplification today.

Think about this: how much climate change you and I experience depends on where we reside on the planet. The Arctic inhabitants (around 4 million today; and just in case you thought "Who lives in the Arctic, for God's sake?", indigenous populations have lived there for thousands of years!) are facing climate change at a much more alarming rate than people in the tropics are. As with most "change" -- a little is okay as long as we can keep up with it. It's the rate of change that determines how much communities will be able to adapt and hence, not suffer.

Agriculture and forestry

The reader would probably remember the huge locust swarms that invaded India earlier this year and caused heavy damage. Today, the link between climate change and locust attacks is quite clear. To summarize it simply: climate change worsened the conditions that help locusts breed and travel. Locusts prefer hot and humid conditions to thrive, and appropriate wind patterns can help carry them far from their original breeding places. This means that farmers sitting in the heart of India may see their crops being ravaged due to locusts that originally came from Somalia or Pakistan (and no, this isn't an international locust conspiracy).

Source: sarangib @ pixabay

However, it is interesting to note that the FAR also contained warnings: "The number of generations per year produced by multivoltine pests would increase, with earlier establishment of pest populations in the growing season and increased abundance during more susceptible stages of growth." (Multivoltine pests are those that can have multiple rounds of breeding in the same year, such as locusts.)

Back then, the effects of more heat were clearer than the effects of more humidity - "An important unknown, however, is the effect that changes in precipitation amount and air humidity may have on the insect pests themselves and on their predators, parasites and diseases." We know that answer now.

There were other warnings too, such as the geographical expansion of tropical pests into higher latitudes, which do not have the same bearing on Indian farmers / citizens. The report also raised the interesting question of increasing temperatures leading to increasing pests leading to increasing use of pesticides and hence, increasing chemical pollution. 

What about food security? I find this statement nuanced and insightful:

I understand this to mean that global food security is not a good parameter to understand the impact of climate change. Globally, food production may be maintained but regional inequalities in access to this food might differ considerably. Richer nations would obviously find it easier to deal with the cost of maintaining food security.

The report touches upon the subject of wildfires by warning that "Losses from wild-fire will be increasingly extensive." In recent years, there have been disastrous wildfires across the world, most notably in the Amazon, Australia and California.

Wildfire in Alberta, Canada. (Source: Wikimedia)

Human settlements

We care about climate change, not because of its scientific aspects alone but because of the impacts it has on human communities. Regarding this aspect, the report states:

"The most vulnerable populations are in developing countries, in the lower income groups, residents of coastal lowlands and islands, populations in semi-arid grasslands, and the urban poor in squatter settlements, slums and shanty towns, especially in megacities."

"As similar events (natural hazards) have in the past, these changes could initiate large migrations of people, leading over a number of years to severe disruptions of settlement patterns and social instability in some areas."

Oceans and the cryosphere

For those interested, the report contains chapters on "Oceans and coastal zones" and "Seasonal snow cover, ice and permafrost". A couple of key points which are self-explanatory:

"Reductions in sea ice will benefit shipping, but seriously impact on ice-dependent marine mammals and birds."

[ Hmmm, what would you choose? ]

"Glacial recession will have significant implications for local and regional water resources, and thus impact on water availability and on hydroelectric power potential. Glacial recession and loss of ice from ice sheets will also contribute to sea-level rise."

Conclusions

The First Assessment Report has been superseded many times over. So why should one bother with a 30-year old report?

The point of this article is to point out two things:

1.    Some problems are foreseeable, avoidable and/or mitigable.

The locust attacks of 2020 are a good example here. With the cooperation of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, the Indian Locust Warning Organization (LWO) helped prepare the country for this attack. The damage due to the locusts would undoubtedly have been much greater without their vigilance. Similarly, many other "natural calamities", though not avoidable, are foreseeable. We know there will be more extreme events, such as heatwaves. We know we should prepare for more erratic rainfall, with alternating dry spells and heavy showers which could lead to (urban) flooding. We know there will be (is) sea-level rise which would exacerbate storms and tsunamis. Preparedness allows us to lessen the damage from these calamities -- but this requires promoting scientific awareness and science-based decision making.

To put it simply -- a large body of scientific knowledge exists and it is to our benefit to understand it and "use" it.

2.    Climate change is the template that worsens a lot of existing problems

The LWO can keep warning the country of future locust attacks. Firefighters can keep trying to save the forests. Both problems have short-term strategies to tackle individual events. However, until we recognize the larger pattern that is worsening such problems -- i.e. climate change -- and set about tackling that as well, our efforts will remain incomplete. This requires solutions to have a two-pronged approach: one that focuses on the short-term and another that focuses on the long-term as well. The short-term approach would benefit from newer technologies (such as drones, which have been used for both kinds of problems) but the long-term approach requires a fundamental shift away from fossil fuels and deforestation. At first glance, one could ask what fossil fuels have to do with locust attacks, but I trust you know the answer now.

Working Group III ➡️

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All images in this post are taken from the IPCC's First Assessment Report, unless stated otherwise.

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