FALSE: The IPCC did not say there’s no evidence that climate change is affecting extreme weather
FALSE: The IPCC did not say there’s no evidence that climate change is affecting extreme weather
The IPCC provides mounds of evidence corroborated by other sources and researchers.
A claim that the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said there is no evidence for climate change’s impact on extreme weather events is FALSE.
A post on X (formerly Twitter) claimed that the IPCC has said that there is no “statistically significant evidence that extreme weather events, in terms of intensity or frequency” are increasing because of global warming.
PesaCheck has previously shown that the Little Ice Age has no bearing on global warming and climate change.
The claim that global temperatures have risen by 1.1℃ since 1849 is correct, according to the IPCC’s latest synthesis report. The temperature has kept increasing since then.
The IPCC is often a target of misinformation by climate change sceptics (here, here, and here).
The IPCC has members from 195 states worldwide. Its three working groups, tasked with producing its reports, each focus on a different aspect of climate change: the scientific evidence, impacts and adaptation, and mitigation.
Each working group’s report is many thousands of pages long. The IPCC also produces a much shorter synthesis report. The sixth IPCC climate report, released in 2023, summarises all the latest Working Group reports.
Contrary to the claim, both the synthesis and Working Group One report on the physical science basis for climate change provide ample evidence for climate change’s effects on weather extremes.
The synthesis report immediately clarifies that there is an apparent link between anthropogenic global warming and changes in extreme weather.
It states that there is high confidence that “human-caused climate change is already affecting many weather and climate extremes in every region across the globe”.
These changes are summarised below for hot extremes (top), heavy precipitation (middle), and drought (below). A coloured block indicates an increase, with dots from one to three indicating low, medium, and high likelihood.
(Credit: IPCC Climate Change 2023 Synthesis Report)
The Working Group One report delves into greater detail, with more than 250 pages of evidence in a dedicated chapter on climate change’s effects on weather extremes.
Their report found that it is a “fact that human-induced greenhouse gas emissions have led to an increased frequency and/or intensity of some weather and climate extremes since pre-industrial time”.
They were particularly evident in temperature extremes, extreme precipitation, droughts, tropical cyclones, and compound extremes like dry, hot events and fire weather.
Other sources support the IPCC’s findings. PesaCheck has previously shown that extreme weather in 2024 can be linked to climate change. We have also shown that, generally, extreme weather events are increasing and causing more deaths.
Individually, PesaCheck has also shown that climate change is especially affecting poorer countries, drought in Somalia, increasing severe weather, drought and heavy rainfall in East and West Africa, lakes, flooding including recently in Libya, ocean currents, wildfires, including in Los Angeles, hurricanes and cyclones, as well as heatwaves.
PesaCheck has examined a claim that the IPCC has said there is no evidence that climate change is affecting extreme weather and finds it to be FALSE.