New World Bank report assesses climate risks

The third report Confronting the New Climate Normal in the Turn Down the Heat Series, commissioned by the World Bank and produced by Climate Analytics and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, was launched by World Bank Presiden Jim Yong Kim on 23 November 2014. It provides an overview over the expected climate impacts in the three regions Latin American and the Caribbean, Middle East and North Africa and Europe and Central Asia for warming levels of 1.5°C, 2°C and 4°C above pre-industrial temperatures.

The report highlights the risks that climate change poses for development and poverty eradication. In identifying those risks, climate impacts are assessed across the physical and biophysical through to the social domain. The report issues a call for strong mitigation action and increased efforts to strengthen the resilience of those who are most vulnerable to the unavoidable impacts of climate change.

One of the report´s findings relates to unavoidable impacts at around 1.5°C warming by mid-century. For what this means for warming levels by 2100 see our additional briefing here.