Climate change 2022: Impacts, adaptation and vulnerability

The Working Group II contribution to the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report assesses the impacts of climate change, looking at ecosystems, biodiversity, and human communities at global and regional levels. It also reviews vulnerabilities and the capacities and limits of the natural world and human societies to adapt to climate change. The report recognizes the interdependence of climate, ecosystems and biodiversity, and human socieites and integrates knowledge more strongly across the natural, ecological, social and economic sciences than earlier IPCC assessments.

The assessment of climate change impacts and risks as well as adaptation is set against concurrently unfolding non-climatic global trends e.g. biodiversity loss, overall unsustainable consumption of natural resources, land and ecosystem degradation, rapid urbanisation, human demographic shifts, social and economic inequalities and a pandemic. The scientific evidence for each key finding is found in the 18 chapters of the report and in the 7 cross-chapter papers as well as the integrated synthesis presented in the Technical Summary.