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NEWS
March 2022 ESRFnews
IPCC scientist joins User Meeting of cumulative past greenhouse-gas emissions, with a post-industrial average temperature rise of 1.5 °C in the 2030s. With no radical changes in policy, she said, the temperature rise could exceed 2 °C by 2050. These are the targets of the International Paris Agreement. So it shows that these targets cannot be met, unless there are strong declines in global greenhouse-gas emissions in the coming decades. Every increment of warming matters.
Diverse inputs Masson-Delmotte concluded her talk with reference to the review process of her working group, which involved 235 authors from 65 countries, 14,000 scientific publications and 78,000 review comments. More than a quarter of contributors were women, she said. It s critical to have a diversity of experiences and perspectives. There s a strong gender dimension to climate-related risks Women and girls are often involved in agricultural activities and their land [is susceptible] to extreme rainfall and sea-level rise. Many of them don t know how to swim. In the case of a major event, they
can be more vulnerable. She added that, following surveys of how IPCC contributors have felt about male and female participation, she and others in the IPCC have implemented a gender action team and issued guidance on female inclusivity. Later in the plenary session,
users heard a lecture by Chloé Zubieta, CNRS researcher at the Cellular and Plant Physiology at CEA Grenoble, France, on the structural biology of plant genes involved in budbreak (see p14), and were given an update on the status of EBS flagship and refurbishment beamlines (see p9). Mariagrazia Pizza of GSK Vaccines in Siena, Italy, discussed how the COVID- 19 pandemic has accelerated the implementation of new technologies to drive vaccine design, and how these technologies could serve the development of other vaccines previously considered impossible, such as those for antimicrobial resistance, emerging infectious diseases and cancer. In a final keynote, Rodolphe Clérac of the CNRS Paul Pascal Research Center focused on the development of
The plenary session of the 32nd ESRF User Meeting began with a strong message about the latest scientific consensus on the status and prospects of climate change. Valérie Masson-Delmotte
(above), climate scientist at the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission and co-chair of Working Group I (the physical science basis) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), spoke of the established, unequivocal fact of the human influence on the climate, and changes that are widespread, rapid and intensifying . The data show with high confidence that humans are affecting the climate in every region of Earth; with less confidence, the data show specific impacts, such as an increased frequency and intensity of rainfall, and an increased risk of agricultural and ecological drought. There s no going back from some changes to the climate system, Masson-Delmotte said at the Zoom session on 8 February. In the near term, Masson-Delmotte
explained, we can expect warming to continue due to the influence
The Paris targets cannot be met unless there are strong declines in emissions
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