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A group of experts convened by the United Nations has conducted the most comprehensive review to date of how climate change is affecting our homes, health, livelihoods and infrastructure, and the natural systems on which they depend.

The picture is not cheerful. Approved by 195 governments, the report shows how widespread and severe the effects of human-caused global warming have become worldwide, and how difficult it will be for societies and ecosystems to manage if nations do not cut their greenhouse gas emissions sharply.

To read Full coverage of the IPCC report.

“Further delays in cohesive global action,” the report says, “will miss a short and fast-closing window of opportunity to secure a livable and sustainable future for all.”

Here are the five main findings:

Climate hazards have worsened significantly over the past decade.

This expert group, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, published its last major study on the effects of climate change in 2014. a separate report last year on the physical factors of climate change.) in 2014her report He said there was “limited evidence” that nations needed more money than was allocated to deal with the dangers. Compared to other stressors, global warming has a “relatively small” impact on human health, the panel’s report said.

Eight years later, that’s a different story.

The new report reveals that climate change not only contributes to ecological threats such as wildfires, heat waves and rising sea levels, but is also driving people away from their homes and endangering food and water supplies. Increasing cases of food and waterborne illness are taking a toll on people’s physical and mental health, with respiratory distress from wildfire smoke and trauma from natural disasters. According to the new report, the funding gap needed to deal with all of this is “widening.”

If warming is not slowed, the dangers will increase exponentially.

Not so long ago, scientists thought that the planet could be protected from the most damaging effects of climate change if global warming did not exceed 2 degrees Celsius or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit above 19th century temperatures.

It is now clear that most of these harms will occur if warming exceeds the climate. 1.5 degrees Celsiusas most likely in next few decades. (We roughly 1.1 degrees Now.) According to the new report, serious and irreversible damage can occur even if we exceed 1.5 degrees but the temperatures recede later.

The report says 1.5 degrees of warming could irreparably damage coastal, mountain and Arctic regions. Increasing forest fires, mass extinction of trees, drying up of swamps and thawing permafrost can release more carbon dioxide into the air, making it even more difficult to stop global warming.

If temperatures continue to rise beyond that, all these dangers will intensify and the worldwide economic damage will increase “non-linearly,” according to the report. Many more animal species are likely to become extinct. According to the report, the mosquitoes will extend their range northward, placing billions of people at risk from dengue by the end of the century.

Societies did not do enough to adapt and stay safe.

The report acknowledges some successes in adapting to these new hazards, such as better early warning systems for disasters. For the most part, however, he says, humanity’s efforts have been “fragmented” and “incremental,” and sometimes counterproductive.

Societies have built seawalls to defend against rising tides, but this often pushes the risk of flooding down the coast. They have worked to put out wildfires, but some of these flames have ecological benefits.

According to the report, “transformational” changes are needed to protect human well-being, including stronger health and sanitation systems, more robust food supply chains, more resilient power grids and more forward-thinking urban planning.

As the warm-up continues, it will get harder to deal with.

According to the report, as global temperatures rise, ecosystems such as coral reefs, wetlands, rainforests and arctic regions are facing the limits of how adaptive they can be.

For some countries, the cost of protecting people’s health, safety and well-being is already too high, according to the report. And as warming continues, measures effective today to protect water resources, support agriculture and defend against climate-related damage will fade. For example, new crop varieties can be developed to withstand heat and drought, but that’s all.

The report suggests that communities are trying to work with nature, not against it – revitalizing wetlands to defend against catastrophic floods, increasing tree cover to cool cities – but even that is only effective up to a point.

Poor countries face far greater challenges than rich ones.

Developing countries not only have fewer resources to deal with climate shocks. They’re also more vulnerable: their infrastructures are often inadequate, their social safety nets weaker, and their people’s livelihoods more dependent on the natural world. The report found that between 2010 and 2020, floods, droughts and storms killed 15 times more people in developing countries in Africa, Asia and elsewhere than in the richest countries.

Even in wealthy countries, there is wide variation in exposure to these risks among different groups of people. A total of 3.3 billion to 3.6 billion people — nearly half of humanity — are today “highly vulnerable” to climate change, according to the report.