Extracted from Foreign and Commonwealth Office UK
UK and Burma’s ‘Weatherman’
welcome IPCC report on Climate Change
Page
history:
Published 1 April 2014
World
location:
World
agency:
World
priorities:
UN
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change releases second report that deals
with the impacts of climate change on humans and environment.
On Monday
31 March, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published
‘Climate Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability’. This is the second volume of
the collective Fifth Assessment Report, the latest and most comprehensive
assessment of the science of climate change since the last publication of such
a report in 2007.
The
Foreign Secretary, William Hague, addressed the urgency of the report’s latest
findings, stating that:
"It is
clear from the IPCC’s report that a two degree increase in the world’s
temperature would be dangerous, and four degrees would be catastrophic. But
that is the likely trajectory, unless there is unprecedented global cooperation
to bring down emissions. No country would be left unaffected. Governments
everywhere have to act."
The
Foreign Secretary’s Special Representative for Climate Change, Sir David King,
agreed that action is required now:
"We must
avoid the impacts of dangerous climate change. The results of a failure to take
action will be widespread, with serious consequences for human health, global
food and resource security and economic prosperity. There are limits to how
much we can adapt to these impacts and only by working together to secure an
international agreement to successfully lower carbon emissions can we hope to
meet the climate challenge."
The
report provides strong evidence of the widespread and consequential impacts of
climate change, as well as the need to consider adaptation options for those
impacts that we can no longer avoid.
Relating the findings of the report to the climatic changes in Burma,
renowned meteorologist Dr U Tun Lwin said:
“The thematic areas from the second UN CLIMATE CHANGE
IMPACTS & MITIGATION REPORT such as water security, extreme weather and
climate impacts are all threatening to Myanmar, which is the second most
impacted country in the world as far as impacts from climate change and natural
disasters are concerned. Currently the levels of UV and the Heat Index are
rising, especially in the summer and pre-monsoon seasons. Myanmar’s monsoon
characteristics have drastically changed since 2006 such as:
1. Later
onset of monsoon season by as much as 15 days
2. Earlier
withdrawal of monsoon season by as much as 25 days
3. A
shortening of the rainy season by as much as 40 days
4. A
disappearance of depressions in the Bay of Bengal by as much as 40%.
In addition to these impacts, Myanmar is expected to have a temperature rise
of 5°C by the end of this century according to the UK’s Hadley Centre, leading
to increased scarcity of water resources.”
Note for editors:
The full
Summary for Policymakers for Working Group 2 Report will be published on http://www.ipcc.ch/
. Dr U Tun Lwin’s website can be viewed on http://www.tunlwin.com/index.php?english.
All the
latest news is available on the Foreign Office page of the gov.uk website at: www.gov.uk/fco
https://www.gov.uk/government/world-location-news/uk-and-burmas-weatherman-welcome-ipcc-report-on-climate-change