Climate change is happening here and now

Climate researcher Sonia Seneviratne contributed to the latest assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). As she highlights here,  the new report clearly demonstrates that we can't afford to lose any more time when it comes to climate change. The Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on the physical basis of climate change has been released today after more than three years of work by over 230 climate researchers. This is the long-awaited update to the last large assessment report (AR5), which was published eight years ago in 2013. I was a coordinating lead author of the chapter on weather and climate extremes. Additional researchers from ETH Zurich contributed to other chapters as well: Erich Fischer was an author on the chapter on global climate projections, and Martin Wild worked on the chapter on the Earth's energy budget, climate feedbacks and climate sensitivity. To sum up, the evidence in the report clearly shows that climate change is no longer a vague threat in the future: it is happening here and now, and our consumption of fossil fuels is chiefly responsible for this phenomenon.