“Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability”

The climate change sometimes is used to refer specifically to change caused by human activity, as opposed to changes in climate that may have resulted as part of Earth's natural processes. In this sense, especially in the context of environmental policy, the term climate change has become synonymous with anthropogenic global warming. Within scientific journals, global warming refers to surface temperature increases while climate change includes global warming and everything else that increasing greenhouse gas levels will affect.

Climate change is a significant and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over periods ranging from decades to millions of years. It may be a change in average weather conditions, or in the distribution of weather around the average conditions (i.e., more or fewer extreme weather events).

Climate change is caused by factors such as biotic processes, variations in solar radiation received by Earth, plate tectonics, and volcanic eruptions. Certain human activities have also been identified as significant causes of recent climate change, often referred to as "global warming".

Flooding, storm surges, droughts and heat waves are among key risks of global warming that will pose growing threats to humans in the future due to rising temperatures.

Violent conflicts, food shortages and infrastructure damage were also forecast to become more prevalent over coming decades, while a growing number of animals and marine species will face increased risk of extinction.

The warnings were published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group II report on Monday, the 31^st March, 2014 which was compiled by more than 300 authors from 70 different countries with contributions from thousands of global experts.

The report is the first of its kind to examine rising temperatures as a series of comprehensive global risks caused by increasingly perilous levels of carbon dioxide emitted by traffic, power stations and other fossil-fuel burners as well as methane from deforestation and farming.

We live in an era of man-made climate change. In many cases, we are not prepared for the climate-related risks that we already face. Investments in better preparation can pay dividends both for the present and for the future.Extreme weather patterns, including a higher risk of flooding, were cited as a growing consequence of rising greenhouse gas emissions, with Europe, Asia and small island states highlighted as being vulnerable, while droughts were also forecast to become more common.

Urban communities would also face “many global risks”, as a result of growing issues related to heat waves, extreme rainfall, flooding, landslides, air pollution drought and water shortages, it warned.

The growing scarcity of freshwater sources and shrinking crop yields would lead to violent conflict, such as civil wars, the report warns, alongside the displacement of numerous communities, referred to as “climate refugees”.

A “large fraction” of animals and marine creatures also faced an increased risk of extinction over the coming decades if global warming continued as projected.

Rising carbon dioxide concentrations were forecast to acidify oceans, destroying coral reefs and threatening shelled marine creatures, impacting communities reliant on the sea as a food source.

However, scientists behind the report also stated that by taking immediate steps to reduce carbon emissions over the coming decades, there could be a reduction in potential consequences by the end of the century.

Governments, firms, and communities around the world are building experience with adaptation. This experience forms a starting point for bolder, more ambitious adaptations that will be important as climate and society continue to change.

The report prompted a string of global calls for stronger government initiatives to tackle the issues that are causing temperatures to rise in order to minimize the future dangers outlined by scientists.

The same panel of global experts behind the study, which has issued four previous “assessment reports” over the past 25 years, will issue a third volume on April 13 in Berlin, in which it will unveil its strategies for tackling carbon emissions.

The latest study is the most in-depth to date, in terms of forecasting the impact of global warming in specific details in addition to emphasizing the social consequences in terms of conflicts and displacement.

It was seven years ago that the IPCC issued its last major report, which was widely attributed with fuelling a shift in global climate change policies leading up to the 2009 UN climate summit in Copenhagen.

A summit in Paris in 2015 will focus on the creation of new international climate treaty to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the first phase of which came to an end in 2012.