The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is set to release its Working Group (WG) II report focusing on the limits of ecosystems, biodiversity hotspots and humans adapting to climate change on February 28.
The report which was drafted by the UN-monitored IPCC will highlight stressed ecosystems, which can possibly no longer tolerate the impact of climate change and reach tipping points.
The report is significant amid a consensus that even 1.5-degree Celsius warming will be dangerous for the planet leading to a breach of important tipping points—the big biophysical elements that regulate the climate systems such as the Greenland Ice Sheet.
Speaking on Thursday, ahead of the release, IPCC WG II co-chair Hans-Otto Pörtner said that some ecosystems are approaching tipping points, adding that Coral reefs are on a downslide and around 70 to 90% of their surface may be affected by the 1.5 degrees Celsius global warming, which will impact both coastal protection and the fisheries.
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According to Portner, other ecosystems showing impacts such as tropical rainforests in the Amazon and Africa are losing the capacity to bind carbon dioxide.
Also speaking, IPCC WG II co-chair Debra Roberts, said that there will be a cross-chapter on losses and damages due to climate crisis which captures how physical changes due to climate crisis put ecosystems under stress.
The report is also expected to highlight how human society, climate systems, and ecosystems are connected, and hence impacts will affect all.
“Humans are dependent on ecosystem services and species richness is an indicator of ecosystem health,” Portner said, adding that humans also have hard limits with some parts of the planet becoming uninhabitable.
The report is further expected to specify both hard and soft limits to adaptation. While hard limits relate to adaptive capacity an ecosystem has reached, soft limits are when the adaptive capacity has been reached but can be changed.
Communities, which can adapt with the help of measures such as additional funds for infrastructure, are an example of a soft limit.
Story was adapted from the Hindustan Times.
