World’s largest Climate Change report published today, as IPCC predict damage humans have caused to Earth

The World’s most extensive report on climate change is to be published later today, detailing the stark reality of climate change and the impact emissions have on the planet.

The report, conducted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will also outline how global warming is expected to change and what action can be taken to reduce negative climate change.

The IPCC have reviewed over 14,000 scientific papers and scientists and environmental experts said the report will be a “massive wake up call,” but could include “nuggets of optimism.”

At a glance: 5 key points

The report includes input from scientists concerned that some of the damage done to the planet could take hundreds of years to undo.

This report is the sixth produced by the IPCC, set up in 1988, and will be split into four sections. The first section, focusing on the physical evidence of climate change, will be published on Monday, 9 August.

A summary of the four sections will also be published on August 9, with input from scientific bodies and environmental experts.

The conclusions will be discussed by nearly 200 delegates from around the world at COP26 in November, the international climate summit held in Glasgow.

UK Minister Alok Sharma, leading the summit, said the damage done to the planet is likely to cause catastrophe if immediate action is not taken.

What’s been said

The IPCC have already warned that humans are the dominant cause of climate change.

Dr Stephen Cornelius from WWF, an observer at IPCC meetings, said this report will be significantly more accurate than previous climate change estimates.

"Our models have gotten better, we have a better understanding of physics and the chemistry and biology, and so they're able to simulate and project future temperature changes and precipitation changes much better than they were," he said.

Richard Black, from non-profit advisory group the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, said: "Coming just before COP26, this report is a massive wake-up call to all those governments that have not yet put forward realistic plans to cut emissions over the next decade.

"It will show that choices made now have a big effect on our future - leading to a runaway world of wild weather impacts and incalculable risks at one end, and at the other a future where climate change is constrained within manageable bounds."

As the world experiences severe weather conditions, extreme floods and wildfires, Climate Change expert Professor Piers Forster from the University of Leeds told LBC: "The report will come with quite a lot of bad news about where we are and where we're going, but there are going to be nuggets of optimism in there which I think are really good for the climate change negotiations.”

“[The report] will be able to say a whole lot more about the extremes we are experiencing today and it will be able to be categoric that our emissions of greenhouse gases are causing them and they are also going to get worse," he added.

Key numbers

The report will be published at 9am today, 9 August.

The last time the IPCC looked at the science of global warming was in 2013 - and the group believe there have been significant advances to their understanding of science since then.

The report is expected to give updates on the temperature rises across the world, with warnings of how soon global temperatures could rise 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. The impacts of climate change are thought to intensify when it increases to above 1.5C.

The report summary has been approved in a process involving scientists and representatives of 195 governments.