COP 26 Finance & Technology Day

• By: AWMA
• On: 11/09/2021 08:58:52
• In: COP 26
• Comments: 0

Mike DeBusschere, P.E. Reporting
A&WMA Observer Delegate to the UNCCC Conference of the Parties 26, Glasgow, Scotland



Thursday, November 4 was Finance & Technology Day and sessions focused on capacity building and state of the climate.  Several presentations were made as follows:

• Current State of the Climate
• Climate Future
• Climate Information for Risk Assessment and Regional Adaptation
• Limiting Future Climate Change

These sessions were 35 minutes each and were technical based presentations of a general nature, drawing from fats presented in the 6^th Annual IPCC Report, which was presented in detail later in the day (see below).
 
Working Group I (WGI) Presentations
 
The WGI is a subset of the IPCC whose contribution represents the most up-to-date physical science understanding of the climate system and climate change, bringing together the latest advances in climate science, and combining multiple lines of evidence from paleoclimate, observations, process understanding, global and regional climate simulations. It shows how and why climate has changed to date, and the improved understanding of human influence on a wider range of climate characteristics, including extreme events. The IPCC 6^th Annual Report (AR6) reflects greater focus on regional information that can be used for climate risk assessments. The WGI contribution benefited from 234 authors from 65 countries and 517 contributing authors with over 14,000 scientific publications assessed and over 78,000 expert and government review comments provided and addressed. Of all authors of the AR6, 44% come from developing countries and countries with economies in transition. The AR6 focused on:

• The current state of the climate
• Possible climate futures
• Climate information for risk assessment and regional adaptation
• Limiting future climate change

 IPCC Chair Hoesung Lee gave a brief presentation of IPCC finding from the AR6 that included the following quotes:  
A video presentation summary was presented of the IPCC report's findings. Among the scenes and narrative were the following:  
Valerie Masson-Delmotte, IPCC WGI Co-Chair, presented a detailed summary of findings from the 6^th Annual IPCC Report.  Some of the findings presented included the following information:

• Climate change has produced measurable rises in sea level, sea temperature, global greening, atmospheric water vapor, precipitation and species shifts. It has produced decreases in ice sheets, snow coverage and sea oxygen.
• Projected best estimated global temperature rise if GHG emission trends continue is +1.5C by 2021-30, 2.0C by 2050, 2.7C by 2100 and 3.3C by 2300.
• Projected best estimated sea level rise will continue for thousands of years and if temperature rise hits 2C will reach 6 meters in 2000 years and 13 meters in 10,000 years.
• Projected best estimated sea level rise will continue for thousands of years and if temperature rise hits 3C will reach 10 meters in 2000 years and 24 meters in 10,000 years.

The full IPCC presentation video can be accessed at https://unfccc-cop26.streamworld.de/webcast/sbsta-ipcc-special-event-on-the-working-group-i-co.