The regions are predominantly located in Central America, the Middle East, parts of Asia, Central and East Africa, and the Sahel. In concrete terms, floods, droughts and storms will occur more often. As a result, mortality in vulnerable countries will be 15 times higher than in the regions least affected by global warming.
This also leads to more migration: millions of people will be displaced by global warming in the coming decades.
The United Nations climate chief called the new insights from science “alarming”. Because disasters can no longer be averted, countries will also have to pay compensation. “The time has now come for that,” said Simon Stiell.
Johan Rockström, the director of the German Potsdam-Institut für Klimafolgenforschung, proposes to calculate the damage caused by greenhouse gases in concrete terms. This mainly concerns carbon dioxide and methane. Such a price can be a strong impulse for a switch to a climate-friendly economic system, according to Rockström. Dozens of scientists contributed to the 2022 report ‘Ten New Insights in Climate Science’.