The 48th meeting of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) began on Monday to consider its special report, which looks at likely future scenarios for 1.5 degree Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) warming above pre-industrial levels.

Representatives of the IPCC's 195 member governments will work with scientists for the next five days to produce an executive summary for policymakers based on the special report commissioned in the wake of the Paris Climate Agreement of 2015

Read more: Paris Agreement: What needs to happen for climate action to succeed?

"Governments have asked the IPCC for an assessment of warming of 1.5 Celsius, its impacts and related emissions pathways, to help them address climate change," IPCC Chair Hoesung Lee said, adding that the report provides "a strong, robust and clear" way forward for policymakers globally.

In an opening speech, the South Korean Chair, who is an expert on the economics of climate change, said the heat waves, wildfires and heavy rainfall experienced globally in recent months underline scientists' warnings about extreme weather caused by climate change.

Read more: Nations backslide on climate protection promises

Fighting climate change with comics and superheroes Climate change: the elephant in the room Raising awareness of climate change through comics — that's the goal of Zambian cartoonist Mwelwa Musonko, founder of Foresight Comics. His work includes cartoons on Germany's energy transition, drawn in 2018 while on the International Journalists' Programme (IJP). This cartoon looks at the focus on immigration in Germany and Europe — ignoring the "elephant in the room" that is climate change.

Fighting climate change with comics and superheroes Cows as the climate change culprits In another cartoon, Mwelwa's pen takes aim at how the world's meat and dairy sector is heating up the planet. Drawn while on a placement at Clean Energy Wire in Germany as part of the IJP, it followed a report from the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy and GRAIN in 2018 that said the world's livestock industry could eat up 80 percent of the globe's allowable carbon budget by 2050.

Fighting climate change with comics and superheroes Germans counting the cost of climate change Mwelwa, aka "Tax," also gave his take on Germans' attitudes to the energy transition. This came on the back of surveys suggesting that while Germans support a switch to renewables in principal, they're less keen on the costs that come with it. The artist told DW that cartoons are a great way to communicate the dangers of climate change, saying: "Art is a perfect way of getting a message through."

Fighting climate change with comics and superheroes Reluctant to part with petrol This cartoon was inspired by data showing Germans are reluctant to say goodbye to their petrol and diesel cars in exchange for an electric vehicle, despite the government offering a €4,000 ($4,676) subsidy per car. Two years after Germany launched the subsidy scheme, only one-sixth of the earmarked funds have been used, said a report from the Federal Office for Economic Affairs and Export Control.

Fighting climate change with comics and superheroes Germany's lignite mines 'visible from space' Germany's lignite mines also got Mwelwa's satirical treatment in this cartoon. Lignite, or brown coal, is extracted using opencast mining in Germany and it made up around 23 percent of the country's power production in 2017, according to AG Energiebilanzen (Energy Balances Group). Lignite-burning power stations are high on the list of Europe's largest CO2 producers.

Fighting climate change with comics and superheroes Climate change's superhero comic book In 2018, Mwelwa came up with a unique way to raise climate change awareness by launching a comic book series. The Fifth Element follows the adventures of superhero Quin Ence, a 10th grader in Lusaka, Zambia, as she battles to save the planet from global warming. He told DW he created the series over concerns that "the majority of Zambians think that climate change is a foreign problem."

Fighting climate change with comics and superheroes Reaching the next generation with comics Mwelwa hopes the comics will raise awareness of climate change among children and teens — using eye-catching cartoons to overcome what he calls an aversion to reading in Zambia. "The reading culture where I am from in Zambia is really, really bad," he told DW. "So, if you would give somebody a book with pictures in it, I think it sparks their interest. Trying to create value with this art."

Fighting climate change with comics and superheroes A heroine to save the world Mwelwa decided to make his superhero a girl because it "brings a different thing to the table," telling DW that comic book writers are increasingly talking about creating more female characters. He added: "If you follow my comic book, you start to see that this character is not perfect. Her life is miserable, and she rises above all of that to save the world and fight climate change." Author: Melanie Hall



'Wildly alarming'

The final draft of the report contains over 6,000 cited peer-reviewed studies, while expert reviews of the second draft attracted almost 25,000 comments from experts and officials from 71 countries.

With a 1.5 degree temperature rise already enough to sow climate chaos, drafts of the report have confirmed the need to cap a global temperature rise at "well-below" 2 degrees, as mandated by the landmark Paris deal.

"I don't know how you can possibly read this and find it anything other than wildly alarming," Peter Frumhoff, director of science and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a Washington-based research and advocacy group, told AFP about the draft.

Nonetheless, the IPCC warned in January that meeting the 1.5 degree goal was "extremely unlikely."

Read more: Opinion: Goodbye to an unrealistic climate goal

Trump wild card

One report author warned that major fossil fuel producers such as Saudi Arabia have "threatened to be obstructionist."

But the fact that this the first IPCC report to be considered by the Trump administration — which pulled the US from the Paris Agreement in 2017 — is also a "a real wild card," Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton University and IPCC author, told AFP.

"Never in the history of the IPCC has there been a report that is so politically charged," said Henri Waisman, a senior researcher at the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations, and one of the report's 86 authors.

Read more: Climate change: Greenhouse gas emissions decline in cities from Berlin to New York

US President Donald Trump refers to amounts of temperature change as he announces his decision that the United States will withdraw from the landmark Paris Climate Agreement

Indeed, the Trump administration cut all funding to the IPCC in August 2017, despite the US long being a key supporter of the climate change body that won a share of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize alongside veteran US climate campaigner Al Gore.

The IPCC will release the summary for policymakers of its 1.5 degree Celsius report at a press conference on October 8. The report will be available for the next UN climate summit, which takes place in December in Katowice, Poland.

sb (AFP, dpa)