Friday’s Big Global Warming Report: 5 Takeaways

Climate scientists express increased confidence of human link to global warming.

“Many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia,” begins the report, which summarizes the worldwide changes worldwide wrought by climate change and its likely future effects. “Each of the last three decades has been successively warmer at the Earth’s surface than any preceding decade since 1850.” (See related “Quiz: What You Don’t Know About Climate Change Science.”)

Amid changes in the air and seas, average global surface temperature data show an increase of 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit (0.85 Celsius) from 1880 to 2012, the report says. (Related: “UN Climate Report Relevance Debated Amid Rollout.”)

“The warming in the climate system is indeed unequivocal,” says report co-chairman Thomas Stocker of Switzerland’s University of Bern, speaking at the

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