PARIS, Feb 28, 2022 (BSS/AFP) - The devastating scale of climate change
impacts will be unveiled Monday in a landmark UN report expected to show that
warming already threatens billions of people and crucial ecosystems.

  Extreme weather, ecosystem collapse, mosquito-borne disease, water
shortages and reduced crop yields are already measurably worse due to rising
temperatures.

  Just in the last year, the world has seen a cascade of unprecedented
floods, heatwaves and wildfires across four continents.

  But the most comprehensive assessment so far of the grave and accelerating
risks of climate change from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) is expected to show that this is just the beginning.

  Released under the shadow of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the IPCC report
will include a crucial 40-page Summary for Policymakers distilling thousands
of pages of scientific research.

  This has been reviewed line-by-line by delegates from nearly 200 countries
in sometimes fraught negotiations.

  IPCC chair Hoesung Lee said the "stakes have never been higher" as the
process kicked off two weeks ago.

  An early draft seen by AFP in 2021 suggests that the report will lay out in
relentless detail the harrowing cost of human-driven carbon pollution to
interconnected natural and human-built systems.

  - Urgent challenge -

  Warming is affecting everything from the availability of food and water to
the survival chances of many species -- and the IPCC report is likely to
outline expectations of a rapid escalation of impacts in the near future.

  It will also underscore the urgent need for "adaptation" -- a term that
refers to preparations for devastating consequences that can no longer be
avoided. In some cases this means that adapting to intolerably hot days,
flash flooding and storm surges has become a matter of life and death.

  While climate change will affect the entire planet, impacts will not fall
equally, the IPCC is expected to underline, with the poorest and most
vulnerable often hit hardest.

  Earth's surface has warmed 1.1 degrees Celsius since the 19th century.

  The 2015 Paris deal calls for capping global warming at "well below" 2C,
and ideally 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).

  In August 2021, another IPCC report on the physical science of human-caused
climate change found that global heating is virtually certain to pass 1.5C,
probably within a decade.

  Edward Carr, a professor at Clark University and lead author of one of the
IPCC report's chapters, stressed the urgency of action to reduce emissions
and adapt to the challenges ahead.

  "We've only got so many choices, there's a finite set of choices we can
make that would move us in a productive way into the future," he told AFP.

  "Every day we wait and delay, some of those choices either get harder or go
away."