Climate Facts: Carbon dioxide contributes the most to global warming, says IPCC

The complexities of climate change and its associated jargon can make it difficult to digest. TheCable’s quick climate facts will help demystify these concepts through easy-to-understand and straightforward explanations.

Here are some to keep at the tip of your fingers:

• The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says carbon dioxide is the greenhouse gas that has contributed the most to global warming, followed by methane.
• At 2°C of global warming, extreme temperatures are expected to happen five times more often and to be 2.6°C hotter, according to IPCC.
• Extreme precipitation events become seven percent more intense with every additional degree of global warming.
• The United Nations says that as carbon dioxide emissions rise, the ocean and land will be less effective at absorbing and slowing the accumulation of Co2 in the atmosphere.
• Limiting human-induced global warming requires limiting cumulative carbon dioxide emissions, reaching at least net zero. Strong reductions in other greenhouse gas emissions such as methane would also be required.