Six years in the making, a climate change report due to be released on Friday, Feb. 2 is expected to present damning evidence that humans are responsible for the climate change and apparent instability in weather that we are seeing today.
Early drafts of the report, produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) formed in 1988, reportedly project more floods, droughts, rising global temperatures, and rising sea levels by the end of this century.
Scientists from around the globe have been working overtime in Paris this week to discuss the final details of the report. Four volumes will be released throughout the year, starting Feb. 2.
According to Dr. Gordon McBean, world-renowned climatologist and Chairman of the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences, this report is more explicit than previous ones in blaming human activity as the cause of climate change.
"The first report in 1990 said we didn't know that humans were at that point causing climate change," says McBean.
"This report says that they are not only causing the climate change over the last 30, 40, or 50 years, but we can actually now detect it at the regional level."
While there have been many recent reports warning of the dire consequences of changing climate conditions, this report is deemed very significant since it has been reviewed by over 2,500 senior scientific experts from over 130 countries and is an authoritative report by a U.N. body.
Environmentalists and some scientists around the world are hoping the report acts as a wake-up call for politicians to do more to combat global warming.
"I hope this report will shock people, governments into taking more serious action, as you really can't get a more authentic and a more credible piece of scientific work," said IPCC chairman Dr. Rajendra Pachauri.
Pachauri, along with co-chair Dr. Susan Solomon, a senior scientist with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), were supported by the U.S. government to head the IPCC in 2002.
As the report is being released, some areas of the world are experiencing unusually warm or extreme weather conditions, and many are projecting the situation to get worse.
Indonesia's Environment Minister has warned that the South Asian nation could see about 2,000 of its islands be submerged in water by 2030 because of rising sea levels, while in Australia people are suffering from the worst drought on the country's record.
British scientists are calling 2007 the warmest year on record, and data from the Swiss-based World Glacier Monitoring Service released earlier this week shows mountain glaciers are shrinking three times faster compared to the 1980s.
In Canada's north, the Inuit are already seeing signs of climate change and melting Arctic ice disturb their traditional lifestyle, while the rest of the country along with their Southern neighbors experienced the second hottest summer on record in 2006.
"There are overwhelming events that are happening that are not necessarily one-to-one due to climate change, but they are indicative of the type of things that will happen more and more in the future," says Dr. McBean.
Whether the extreme weather events can be taken as definite signs of changing climate conditions or not, the issue seems to be catching more attention worldwide.
A recent Pew Research Center for the People and the Press poll in the United States estimated that 77 percent of Americans see global warming as a very or somewhat serious problem, with a margin of error of 3 percent. In Canada, a similar Ipsos Reid poll showed that 90 percent of Canadian respondents expressed some degree of concern about climate change, and another poll showed that the environment is the top issue of concern among Canadians.
Recent polls in Australia have also shown climate change to be among the top issues of concern for Australians and a survey conducted last November showed that over 80 percent of voters want their government, who has refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, to do more to address this issue.
President George Bush, who has also refused to ratify the Kyoto protocol, acknowledged that the issue of climate change is a "serious challenge" in his State of the Union address last week and called on Americans to reduce gasoline usage by 20 percent in the next 10 years.
"Both United States and Australia are starting to move," says Dr. McBean.
"George Bush is now recognizing that climate change is happening, and the Australians are having their worst droughts and wildfires ever."
While calls for action might be escalating on the policy side, Beatrice Olivastri, co-founder and CEO of the Friends of the Earth Canada, says many people are realizing the urgency of the issue and are making changes in their lifestyles to be more environmentally friendly.
"I think it's a breakthrough and people sense that we need significant and urgent change," says Olivastri.
Additional reporting by Sharda Vaidyanath in Ottawa and Reuters