Global Research
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has produced numerous reports detailing the latest scientific, technical and socio-economic research conducted to better understand the risk of human-induced climate change, its observed and projected impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation.
The latest report concludes that it is very likely that over the past 50 years cold days, cold nights and frosts have become less frequent over most land areas. Hot days and hot nights have become more frequent. The report also found that it is likely that in most land areas heat waves and heavy rainfall periods have become more frequent.
With reference to water resources, the report concludes that there is high confidence that by the mid-21st century annual river runoff and water availability will decrease in some dry regions, including many regions in Australia.
In 2007, the government of the United Kingdom commissioned a report on the economics of climate change. The report outlined a range of economic impacts that may result from climate change including:
- extreme weather could reduce global gross domestic product (GDP) by up to 1%;
- a two to three degrees Celsius rise in temperatures could reduce global economic output by 3%
- if temperatures rise by five degrees Celsius, up to 10% of global output could be lost (the poorest countries would lose more than 10% of their output); and
- in the worst case scenario, global consumption (per head) would fall by 20%.