Brussels - The world's top climate change experts Monday started final talks on a report on the impact of global warming, expected to issue a grim outlook of it's impact on human life. The United Nations-backed study, six years in the making and drawing on the work of more than 2,000 experts, is scheduled to be released April 6 in Brussels. It examines the expected impact of climate change on human society.
The findings by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) make up the second section of a global climate report. They follow the first instalment released February in Paris, which focussed on the scientific evidence of global warming itself.
Some of the second instalment's expected predictions are that coastal and low-lying regions will be flooded by rising sea levels, driving millions inland.
It is also expected to warn that higher global temperatures will lead to changing crop yields, increasing famine and disease.
Other findings will be that more heat-waves and stronger storms will lead to more deaths. Changing ecosystems mean countless animal and plant species will become extinct, the report will warn.
Another ominous finding of the upcoming report is that it may already be too late to prevent some of global warming's impacts - humans can only adapt to so much, especially when it comes to rising sea levels flooding islands.
The report will also offer recommendations on how already-occurring effects of climate change can be dealt with.
The IPCC's third section will be released in Bangkok in May, offering specific advice on how policy makers can reduce global warming.
In it's first section, the panel found an "unequivocal" trend of rising global temperatures and sea levels and placed the blame squarely on man-made emissions.
Experts predicted the Earth would heat up between 1.8 and 4 degrees Celsius by the end of this century, and up to 6.4 degrees Celsius at the poles, which heat up twice as fast as around the equator.
Melting ice has led sea levels to climb 17 centimetres in the 20th century, and at a rate of 3.1 millimetres per year since 1993.
