World’s leading climate scientists’ view of future
In advance of the forthcoming UN Climate Ambition Summit, the Guardian asked more than 40 scientific experts from around the world about their view of the effects of climate change. The newspaper reports:
They said that the rise in global temperature was entirely in line with decades of warnings and was being boosted this year by the return of the El Niño climate pattern. But they said that people and places were more vulnerable to extreme weather than expected and were suffering effects never previously experienced as climate records were shattered.
“The impacts are frighteningly more impactful than I – and many climate scientists I know – expected,” said Prof Krishna AchutaRao at the Indian Institute of Technology.
Dr Christophe Cassou, a CNRS researcher at the Université Paul Sabatier Toulouse III, in France, said: “Changes in [climate] hazards have not been underestimated at global scale. But the impacts have been underestimated because we are much more vulnerable than we thought – our vulnerability is smacking us in the face.”
“We may be seriously underestimating the dangers ahead,” said Dr Raúl Cordero, until recently at the University of Santiago, Chile. “We are flying partially blind on what to expect for climate extremes.”