rlacombe/ClimateX huggingface dataset:
Maintaining existing indigenous forest and indigenous forest restoration is a win–win, maximising benefits to biodiversity, adaptation and mitigation (Griscom et al., 2017; Watson et al., 2018; Lewis et al., 2019) (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
Yet many areas targeted by AFR100 erroneously mark Africa’s open ecosystems (grasslands, savannas, shrublands) as degraded and suitable for afforestation (Figure Box 9.3.1; (Veldman et al., 2015; Bond et al., 2019) (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
General principles for this type of monitoring were developed for Lake Tanganyika (Plisnier et al., 2018) and could be applied to develop harmonised, regional monitoring of African lakes, rivers and wetlands (Tamatamah and Mwedzi, 2020) 9.6.4.3 Marine and Coastal Ecosystems Marine and coastal ecosystems such as mangroves, seagrass and coral reefs provide storm protection and food security for coastal communities (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
However, in southern Africa as a whole, river flows have mostly decreased (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
Observed climate changes in Africa (see Section 9.5) have led to changes in river flow and runoff (Dallas and Rivers-Moore, 2014; Wolski et al., 2014) and high fluctuations in lake levels (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
In some higher altitude regions, like the Niger Inland Delta in west Africa, river flows and water levels are expected to increase (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: medium)
In the Volta River system, increasing wet season river flows (+36% by 2090s) and Volta lake outflow (+5% by 2090s) are anticipated under RCP8.5 (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: medium)
Changes in the amplitude, timing and frequency of extreme events such as droughts and floods will continue to affect lake levels, rates of river discharge and runoff and groundwater recharge (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
Pressure on water demand due to climate change and variability is threatening income, development processes and food security in the region (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
Extreme climate events have been key drivers in rising acute food insecurity and malnutrition of millions of people requiring humanitarian assistance in Africa (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
Children and pregnant women experience disproportionately greater adverse health and nutrition impacts (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: very high)
Climate change is projected to have overall positive impacts on sugarcane and Bambara nuts in southern Africa, oil palm in Nigeria and chickpea in Ethiopia (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: low)
However, adaptation limits for crops in Africa are increasingly reached for global warming above 2°C (high confidence), and in tropical Africa may already be reached at current levels of global warming (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: low)
Approximately 59% of sub-Saharan Africa’s urban population resides in informal settlements (in some cities up to 80%), and the population in informal settlements is expected to increase (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: very high)
These urbanisation trends are compounding increasing exposure to climate hazards, particularly floods and heatwaves (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
Globally, the highest rates of population growth and urbanisation are taking place in Africa’s coastal zones (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
Africa’s large population of urban poor and marginalised groups and informal sector workers, further contribute to high vulnerability to extreme weather and climate change in many settlements (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
Other non-climatic stressors which exacerbate vulnerabilities, especially in urban areas, include poor socioeconomic development, weak municipal governance, poor resource and institutional capacities, together with multi-dimensional, location-specific inequalities (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
Future rapid coastal development is expected to increase existing high vulnerabilities to sea level rise (SLR) and coastal hazards, particularly in east Africa (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
This portends increased vulnerability to risk of heat stress in big cities of central, east and west Africa (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: very high)
With increasing societal demands on limited water resources and future climate change, it is expected that there will be an intensification of WEF competition and trade-offs (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
Modelling suggests that proactive adaptation of road designs to account for temperature increases is a ‘no regret’ option in all cases, but accounting for precipitation increases should be assessed on a case-by-case basis (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: medium)
These interventions simultaneously reduce the vulnerability of low- income residents to climate shocks, prevent lock-ins into carbon- intensive development pathways and reduce poverty (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
The combined mitigation–adaptation interventions in the land use transport systems of African cities are also expected to have sufficient short-term co- benefits (reducing air pollution, congestion and traffic fatalities) to be ‘no regret’ investments (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: very high)
Climate change is already challenging the health and well-being of African communities, compounding the effects of underlying inequalities (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
In east Africa, there has been an expansion of the Anopheles vector into higher altitudes (Gone et al., 2014; Carlson et al., 2019) and increasing incidence of infection with Plasmodium falciparum with higher temperatures (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
In east and southern Africa and the Sahel, malaria vector hotspots and prevalence are projected to increase under RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 by 2030 (1.5°C–1.7°C global warming) (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
With continued GHG emissions, these include: west Africa by 2030 (1.7°C global warming) (high confidence) (Yamana et al., 2016; Semakula et al., 2017b; Ryan et al., 2020), parts of southern central Africa and dryland regions in east Africa by 2050 (2.5°C global warming) (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
The ENSO cycle currently contributes to seasonal epidemic malaria in epidemic-prone areas (high confidence), and is projected to shift the malaria epidemic fringe southward and into higher altitudes by mid- to end-century (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
Emerging and future pandemic threats Future influenza pandemics are highly likely, as are regional epidemics and pandemics of novel zoonotic viruses (including coronaviruses and flaviviruses) (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
Contextualised risk studies on local drivers of transmission are still lacking and present a major gap in developing appropriate adaptation strategies (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
Substantial avoided economic damages to African countries are projected from ambitious, near-term global mitigation limiting global warming well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
Nevertheless, climate change impacts on poverty in Africa will depend on how socioeconomic development unfolds over the coming decades (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: medium)
In rural Africa, poor and female-headed households face greater livelihood risks from climate hazards (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
Urbanisation in Africa is affected by climate conditions in rural agricultural areas (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
Migration is an important and potentially effective climate change adaptation strategy in Africa and must be considered in adaptation planning (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
Significant warming has intensified the threat to social and economic sustainability (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: medium)
Rising temperatures increase the likelihood of the threat of heatwaves across Asia, droughts in arid and semiarid areas of West, Central and South Asia, delays and weakening of the monsoon circulation in South Asia, floods in monsoon regions in South, Southeast and East Asia, and glacier melting in the Hindu Kush Himalaya region (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: medium)
Decrease in precipitation influences energy demand as well as desalination, underground water pumping and other energy- intensive methods are increasingly used for water supply (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
Among 13 developing countries with large energy consumption in Asia, 11 are exposed to high-energy insecurity and industrial-systems risk (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
This can be explained by site-specific complex interaction of positive effect of warming on tree growth, drought stress, change in snow precipitation, land-use change (especially grazing) and other factors (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
The increased considerable changes in biomes in Asia are a response to warming (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: medium)
Climate change, human activity and lightning have caused the increase in wildfire severity and area burned in North Asia after the 1990s (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: medium)
Length of plant growth season has increased in some parts of East and North Asia, while the opposite trend, or no change at all, has been observed in other parts (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
Observed biodiversity or habitat losses of animals plants have been linked to climate change in some parts of Asia (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
There is evidence that climate change can alter species interaction or spatial distribution of invasive species in Asia (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
Across Asia, under a range of representative concentration pathways and other scenarios, rising temperatures are expected to contribute to a northward shift of biome boundaries and an upwards shift of mountain treeline (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: medium)
For a given evidence and agreement statement, different confidence levels can be assigned, but increasing levels of evidence and degrees of agreement are correlated with increasing confidence.Coastal habitats of Asia are diverse, and the impacts of climate change including rising temperatures, ocean acidification and sea level rise (SLR) has brought negative effects to the services and the livelihoods of people depending on it (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
The risk of irreversible loss of coral reefs, tidal marshes, seagrass meadows, plankton community and other marine and coastal ecosystems increases with global warming, especially at 2°C temperature rise or more (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
By mid- 21st Century, the international transboundary river basins of Amu Darya, Indus, Ganges could face severe water scarcity challenges due to climatic variability and changes acting as stress multipliers (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
Due to global warming, Asian countries could experience an increase in drought conditions (5–20%) by the end of this century (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
The total amount and area of glacier lakes have increased during the past decade (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
Glacier lake outburst flood (GLOF) will threaten the securities of the local and downstream communities (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
Snowmelt water contributed 19% of the increase change in runoff of arid regions’ rivers in Xinjiang, China, and 10.6% of the upper Brahmaputra River during 2003–2014 (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: medium)
Climate-related risks to agriculture and food systems in Asia will progressively escalate with the changing climate, with differentiated impacts across the region (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: medium)
Coastal cities, especially in South and Southeast Asia, are expected to see significant increases in average annual economic losses between 2005 and 2050 due to flooding, with very high losses in East Asian cities under the high- emissions scenario (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
Under the high-emissions scenario, higher risks from extreme temperature and precipitation are projected for almost all cities (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: medium)
By 2080, 940 million to 1.1 billion urban dwellers in South and Southeast Asia could be affected by extreme heat lasting more than 30 d yr–1 (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
At higher warming, key infrastructures, such as power lines, transport by roads and railways, and built infrastructures, such as airports and harbours, are more exposed to climate-induced extreme events, especially in coastal cities (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: medium)
Adaptation actions tend to be in the initial stages and more reactive (57% of urban adaptations focus on preparatory interventions, such as capacity building, and 43% of cities report implemented adaptation interventions) (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: medium)
The degree of implementation of urban adaptation is uneven with large cities receiving more funding and priority, and smaller cities and towns, and peri-urban spaces, seeing relatively lower adaptation action (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: medium)
Under the medium-to-high emissions scenario, rising temperatures and extreme climate events will have an increasing impact on human health and well-being with varying types and magnitudes of impact across Asia (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
Factors motivating adaptation actions include risk perception, perceived self-efficacy, sociocultural norms and beliefs, previous experiences of impacts, levels of education and awareness (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
Non-material losses and damages are reported to a lesser degree, but this is due to under-reporting and methodological issues with detection and attribution to climate change (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
Climate risks, vulnerability and adaptation measures need to be factored into decision making across all levels of governance (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
More accurate forecasting of extreme events, risk awareness and prioritising individual and collective decision making also need to be addressed (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
Some Asian countries and regions offer solutions to overcome these barriers: through use of advanced technologies (in situ observation and remote sensing, a variety of new sensor technologies, citizen science, artificial intelligence and machine learning tools); regional partnerships and learning; improved forecasting capabilities; and better risk awareness (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
Surface temperature has increased in the past century all over Asia (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: very high)
Elevation-dependent warming (i.e., the warming rate is different across elevation bands is observed in HMA) (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: medium)
Large increases in temperature extremes are observed in West and Central Asia (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
In 2016 and 2018, extreme warmth was observed in Asia for which an event-attribution study revealed that this would not have been possible without anthropogenic global warming (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: medium)
There are considerable regional differences in observed annual pre- cipitation trend (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: medium)
Observations show a decreas- ing trend of the South Asian summer monsoon precipitation during the second half of the 20th century (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
Increase in heavy precipita- tion occurred recently in South Asia (high confidence), and in South- east and East Asia (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: medium)
Annual surface wind speeds have been decreasing in Asia since the 1950s (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
The observed changes in the frequency of sand and dust storms vary from region to region in Asia (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: medium)
In contrast, West Asia has witnessed more frequent and intensified dust storms affecting Iran and Persian Gulf countries in recent decades (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: medium)
There is no significant long-term trend during 1951–2017 in the numbers of tropical cyclones (TCs) with maximum winds of 66.37 km h–1 or higher forming in the western North Pacific and the South China Sea (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: medium)
There has been a significant northwestward shift in TC tracks since the 1980s, and a detectable poleward shift since the 1940s in the average latitude where TCs reach their peak intensity in the western North Pacific (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: medium)
Their report also summarised that there is increased agreement between coupled model simulations of anthropogenic climate change and observations of changes in ocean heat content (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
Ocean acidification continues with surface seawater pH values having shown a clear decrease by 0.01–0.09 from 1981–2011 along the Pacific coasts of Asia (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
This Report also uses the term ‘likely range’ to indicate that the assessed likelihood of an outcome lies within the 17–83% probability range.10.3.1.2 Projected Climate Change Rising temperatures increase the likelihood of the threat of heatwaves across Asia, droughts in arid and semiarid areas of West, Central and South Asia, floods in monsoon regions in South, Southeast and East Asia, and glacier melting in the HKH region (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
Projections of future changes in annual mean surface air temperature in Asia are qualitatively similar to those in the previous assessments with greater warming at higher latitudes (i.e., North Asia) (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
Projected surface air temperature changes in the Tibetan Plateau, Central Asia and West Asia are also significant (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
The highest levels of warming for extremely hot days are expected to occur in West and Central Asia with increased dryness of land (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
Over mountainous regions, elevation-dependent warming will continue (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: medium)
Glaciers will generally shrink, but rates will vary among regions (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
Temperature rise will be strongest in winter in most regions, while it will be the strongest on summer in the northern part of West Asia and some parts of South Asia where a desert climate prevails (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
The wet-bulb globe temperature, which is a measure of heat stress, is likely2 to approach critical health thresholds in West and South Asia under the RCP4.5 scenario, and in some other regions, such as East Asia, under the RCP8.5 scenario (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
Projections show that a sizeable part of South Asia will experience heat stress conditions in the future (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
A very likely large percentage increase in annual precipitation is projected in South and North Asia (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
Precipitation is projected to decrease over the northwest part of the Arabian Peninsula and increase over its southern part (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: medium)
Both heavy and intense precipitation are projected to intensify and become more frequent in South, Southeast and East Asia (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
Monsoon land precipitation likely will increase in East, Southeast and South Asia mainly due to increasing moisture convergence by elevated temperature (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
Increasing land–sea thermal contrast and resultant lower tropospheric circulation changes, together with increasing moisture, are projected to intensify the South Asian summer monsoon precipitation (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: medium)
Monsoonal winds will generally become weaker in a future warming world with different magnitudes across regions (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: medium)
Models suggest a reduction in TC frequency but an increase in the proportion of very intense TCs over the western North Pacific in the future; however, some individual studies project an increase in western North Pacific TC frequency (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: medium)
In the western North Pacific, some models project a poleward expansion of the latitude of maximum TC intensity, leading to a future increase in intense TC frequency south of Japan (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: medium)
With global warming, the energy consumption for heating in winter decreases, while the energy consumption for cooling in summer significantly increases, but the overall energy demand shows an upwards trend (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
Since the 1960s, the total solar radiation on the ground in Asia has shown a downwards trend as a whole, which is consistent with the change in global total solar radiation on the ground, and has experienced a phased change process of ‘first darkening and then brightening’ (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
However, wind speed over most Asian regions is obviously decreasing (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
At the same time, with the increase in the proportion of renewable energy in the power system, the power system will be more vulnerable to climate change and extreme weather and climate events, and the vulnerability and risk of the power system will greatly increase (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: medium)
Alpine treeline position in Asian mountains in recent decades either moves upwards in North Asia or demonstrates multi-directional shifts in Himalaya (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
The observed loss of biodiversity and habitat of animals and plants has been linked to climate change in some parts of Asia (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
In Asia, the date of arrival of migrant birds to nesting areas and the date of departure from winter areas are changing consistently with climate change (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: medium)
Future climate change would cause biodiversity and habitat loss in many parts of Asia using modelling approaches (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
The impact of future climate change on invasive species may be species- or region specific (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: medium)
The risk of irreversible loss of many marine and coastal ecosystems increases with global warming, especially at 2°C or more (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
By mid-21st Century, the international transboundary river basins of Amu Darya, Indus, Ganges could face severe water scarcity challenges due to climatic variability and changes acting as stress multipliers (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
The changes in snowmelt water can explain 19% of the variations in rivers of arid regions like Xinjiang, China (Bai et al., 2018) (medium confidence), and the 10.6% of the runoff of the upper Brahmaputra River was contributed by snow during 2003–2014 (Chen et al., 2017c) (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: medium)
Bhambri et al., 2017; Mukherjee et al., 2017; Ding et al., 2018), threatening the security of the local and down streaming societies (high confidence).The total amount and area of glacier lakes increased during last decade (Zhang et al., 2015; Chen et al., 2017c) (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
Researchers have found that the southern Tibetan Plateau has been consistently melting from 1998–2007 and is projected to continue melting until 2050 (Lutz et al., 2014b) (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
Increase in extreme precipitation events is likely to cause more flash-flood events in the future (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: medium)
By 2050, it is likely that 69% of fundamental human infrastructure in the Pan Arctic will be at risk (RCP 4.5 scenario) (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: medium)
In many Asian cities, land subsidence control can serve as an adaptation strategy since it is estimated to significantly reduce relative SLR (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
In addition to all-cause mortality (Dang et al., 2016; Chen et al., 2018e), deaths related to circulatory, respiratory, diabetic (Li et al., 2014b) and infectious diseases (Ingole et al., 2015), as well as infant mortality (Son et al., 2017), are increased with high temperature (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
Increased hospital admissions (Giang et al., 2014; Lin et al., 2019) and ambulance transport (Onozuka and Hagihara, 2015) coincide with increased ambient temperature (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
Individuals with lower degrees of education and socioeconomic status, older individuals and individuals living in communities with less green space are more susceptible to heat-related mortality (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
These heat effects have been attenuating over recent decades in East Asian countries, although the driving force behind this remains unknown (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: high)
Rising ambient temperature accelerates pollutant formation reactions and may modify air-pollution-related health effects (IPCC AR6_WGII, confidence: medium)