Listening to Naughtie’s line of questioning – ‘the big story is not gloom and doom, the message in this report could be read as… if we spend money we can survive and prosper’ – it’s perhaps easy to see why campaigners were protesting outside Broadcasting House in London last week at what they saw as unbalanced coverage of climate change on the BBC.

Field was repeatedly quizzed on whether he was omitting all the good news in the IPCC report.

Naughtie flagged up complaints by Richard Tol, a University of Sussex economics professor and one of the 70-strong writing team behind the final IPCC report, who told the BBC:

The drafts of the summary struck a very balanced tone. It sort of turned into a positive message about how these risk are manageable, to a story about just the risks… [suggesting] climate change is a terrible thing and the only solution is to reduce greenhouse gases as soon as possible

But the BBC didn’t mention that one of Tol’s key findings submitted for the report was dismissed last week as “completely meaningless” by governments.

Chris Field, one of the co-chairs of working group II behind today’s report, has been speaking to the Today programme.

He said:

There is an element of the report that capitalises on the opportunities for investments in adaptation. An equally strong message is that the risk of severe and pervasive impacts goes up dramatically in a world that doesn’t pay attention to high emissions

If there’s one message that comes through more clearly there any other [in the report], it’s that we’ll face consequential impacts from climate change

Broadcaster James Naughtie pushed Field several times to say that today’s report shows there is some good news to come from climate change. Field replied:

There are examples of where benefits might accrue from climate change, especially small benefits with a small amount of climate change, but the report is full of impacts that are severe and pervasive…

And Field listed what we he saw as the three key messages of the report:

Climate change impacts have already occurred with real impacts around the world

Moving forward, risks with climate change are really pervasive especially with a high [greenhouse gas] emissions trajectory

Risks are substantially decreased with mitigation and adaptation

Adam Vaughan here. I’m going to open the liveblog to wrap up the reaction to the report, which is beginning to flood in. In a few minutes, we should hear from Chris Field, one of the co-chairs of the IPCC group behind today’s report, on the BBC Today programme.

In the meantime, Suzanne Goldenberg has been speaking to Rajenda Pachauri, the chairman of the IPCC, about the report. He says:

I hope these facts will, for want of a better word, jolt people into action. It’s a sort of breakthrough over the knowledge that already exists in this field.

That’s where we’ll leave the Guardian’s blog on the IPCC report on climate change effects on people and the planet.

You can read Suzanne Goldenberg’s full report here.

• The IPCC report, released today, has revealed the state of climate change’s effect on people and the planet.
• It’s the second of three (the first looked at physical effects and the next will look at solutions) and the first update in seven years.
• The report was compiled by more than 300 scientists. Nearly 500 people signed off on the wording of the report, including 66 expert authors, 271 officials from 115 countries, and 57 observers.
• “Nobody on this planet is going to be untouched by the impacts of climate change.” – IPCC chairman, Dr Rajendra K Pachauri.
• The effects of climate change are undeniable, and there is no “pause,” said IPCC. The worst is yet to come.
• Climate change impacts include food security issues and extreme events, and severe, pervasive, and irreversible impacts on species, as well as a risk of crossing environmental tipping points.
• Great Barrier Reef under threat.
• Food supply already affected. This is the first time that the IPCC has taken a direct look at food supply and security. Staples like wheat and maize have already shown declines in crop yields in recent decades, and fish stocks also declining.
• People living in poverty are already experiencing the effects of climate change, and will continue to bear the brunt of it.
• Between 2005 and 2010 the volume of scientific papers on the effects climate change doubled.
• The report focused heavily on mitigation and adaptation, and labelled the climate change effort as “a challenge in risk management”.
• “This evidence strengthens the case for early action in the UK and around the world to lessen the significant risks posed by climate change. We cannot afford to wait.” – UK secretary of state for energy and climate change, Edward Davey.
• “Unless we act dramatically and quickly, science tells us our climate and our way of life are literally in jeopardy.” US secretary of state, John Kerry.
• The IPCC report “reinforces the government’s support for the science and the need to take action to combat climate change.” – Australian environment minister, Greg Hunt.

The secretary of state for energy and climate change, Edward Davey has released a statement in response to the IPCC report. Davey said “the science has clearly spoken” and cited Britain’s recent floods as “testament to the devastation climate change could bring.”

“The UK is leading from the front and working with our European partners. We’ve adopted some of the most ambitious climate change targets in the world,” he said.

“This evidence strengthens the case for early action in the UK and around the world to lessen the significant risks posed by climate change. We cannot afford to wait.”

US Secretary of State John Kerry has warned that failing to act immediately and decisively on climate change will have “catastrophic” and wide-ranging consequences, reports AFP.

“Unless we act dramatically and quickly, science tells us our climate and our way of life are literally in jeopardy,” said Kerry.

“Denial of the science is malpractice.”

“There are those who say we can’t afford to act. But waiting is truly unaffordable. The costs of inaction are catastrophic,” he added.

We earlier saw a statement from the science advisor to the White House, John Holdren.

The Australian environment minister, Greg Hunt, has told the Guardian the IPCC report “reinforces the government’s support for the science and the need to take action to combat climate change.”

“Australia is committed to addressing the challenges through direct and practical policy measures. This includes reducing emissions by five percent from 2000 levels by 2020. Central to achieving this is the creation of the Emissions Reduction Fund,” said Hunt.

“The five percent target represents serious action and is comparable with the action being taken by other countries when compared using 2005 as the benchmark starting point.”

Hunt also maintained the government’s argument that Australia’s carbon tax does not work and needs to be repealed.The federal government has twice now had a bill to repeal Australia’s carbon tax blocked in the Senate.

Shadow Minister for Climate Change Mark Butler said the government is making the wrong choices.

“The Abbott Government has consistently ignored expert advice about the impending risks of climate change and is attempting to unravel the policy framework established by the previous Labor Government which was designed to address the exact risks identified in the IPCC report,” said Butler.

“In its place, Tony Abbott and Greg Hunt are trying to introduce Direct Action, a deeply flawed, short-term tokenistic policy that pays big polluters to keep polluting.”

The Greens leader, Christine Milne called on the government to heed the IPCC’s report.

“In the face of more calls for a global response, the Abbott government wants to rip up every policy and tear down every defence that Australia has against climate change,” said Milne.

“This report shows that climate change is overwhelming and will affect every aspect of our lives. Not only will it dramatically impact the natural world we live in, it is an economic issue, an employment issue, a health, housing, and agricultural issue. It’s an immigration and a transportation issue.”

I’ll wrap up this blog shortly, but first, here is a comprehensive write up on today from the Guardian’s Suzanne Goldenberg in Yokohama, Japan.

The report from the UN’s intergovernmental panel on climate change concluded that climate change was already having effects in real time – melting sea ice and thawing permafrost in the Arctic, killing off coral reefs in the oceans, and leading to heat waves, heavy rains and mega-disasters.

And the worst was yet to come. Climate change posed a threat to global food stocks, and to human security, the blockbuster report said.

“Nobody on this planet is going to be untouched by the impacts of climate change,” said Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the IPCC.

Read Suzanne’s full report here.

The ocean has absorbed the equivalent of two atomic bombs every second in energy, says one of the coordinating lead authors, and the early effects of climate change are likely to impact key industries.

“This report identifies tourism and maritime shipping as industries likely to feel some of the earliest and most significant climate change impacts, said Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, an IPCC coordinating lead author and director of the University of Queensland global change institute.

“Extreme weather events affect holidays and disrupt global transport schedules. Even a one degree Celsius temperature change above today will bring devastatingly expensive impacts for human communities and economies.

“Oceans have absorbed over 90 per cent of the heat arising from human-induced greenhouse gas emissions and have soaked up around 30 per cent of the carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels. The rate at which energy has been entering the ocean is phenomenal, equivalent to the addition of two atomic bombs every second,” said Hoegh-Guldberg.

“The ability of ocean species to adapt genetically to increasing levels of stress brought on by rising temperatures and increased ocean acidification is not occurring fast enough, given the long generation times of many organisms such as corals and fish. Combined with temperature rise, ocean acidification could seriously impact calcifying organisms and coastal aquaculture, causing irreversible damage to oceans and economies.”

“Climate change has already delivered severe economic damage and things will only get worse without more action,” said Dr. Andrew Steer, President & CEO of the environmental research organisation, the World Resources Institute.

“The report makes it clear that deep and rapid cuts in emissions can greatly reduce the costs of these impacts. Taking action now will undoubtedly be less expensive than waiting.

Governments have a responsibility to protect people and businesses from climate hazards by increasing resilience. But, we also need to make significant emissions reductions to get on a safer path.”

Suzanne Goldenberg has filed the five key points from the IPCC, after it revealed the world faces threats to food supply, conflicts over water rights and growing inequality.

1. Food threat

2. Human security

3. Inequality

4. No-one is safe

5. It’s hard but not hopeless

You can read about the five points in detail here.

Emma Bryce writes on what the report means for the world’s “agricultural road map”. The IPCC report yields clues about our future food scenario, and in the meantime two studies have exposed the scene at global and local scales.

“Just recently, two studies emerged that each offered a unique look at the force of these impacts—the first, a globe-scale evaluation, and the second a study that zooms in to consider effects closer to the ground. Both paint a picture of a planet in even greater flux by mid-century,” she writes.

Read Emma’s full article here.

If rising sea levels, reduced crops and dying reefs aren’t enough to get you worried about the content in the IPCC’s report, perhaps the fate of your morning coffee will do it.

My Guardian colleague Damian Carrington writes:

Global warming is leading to bad, expensive coffee. Almost 2bn cups of coffee perk up its drinkers every day, but a perfect storm of rising heat, extreme weather and ferocious pests mean the highland bean is running out of cool mountainsides on which it flourishes.

Read his article in full here.

From AP:

The problems have gotten so bad that the panel had to add a new and dangerous level of risks. In 2007, the biggest risk level in one key summary graphic was “high” and colored blazing red. The latest report adds a new level, “very high,” and colors it deep purple.

You might as well call it a “horrible” risk level, said report co-author Maarten van Aalst, a top official at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

Dana Nuccitelli writes for the Guardian, looking at the arguments made against mitigation and risk management.

Contrarians have tried to spin the conclusions of the report to incorrectly argue that it would be cheaper to try and adapt to climate change and pay the costs of climate damages. In reality the report says no such thing. The IPCC simply tells us that even if we manage to prevent the highest risk scenarios, climate change costs will still be high, and we can’t even grasp how high climate damage costs will be in the highest risk scenarios.

You can read the full piece from Dana over at Climate Consensus – The 97%.

Part of the report examines the impact of sea level rises, and takes a specific look at Australia and New Zealand. I mentioned some of the facts and figures earlier, but the IPCC summary also looks at the impact of government bureaucracy and litigation has on effectively mitigating future problems.

“..experience in Australia has shown high litigation potential and opposing priorities at different levels of government, [are] undermining retreat policies,” it reads.

“Mandatory disclosure of information about future risks, community engagement and policy stability are critical to support retreat, but existing-use rights, liability concerns, special interests, community resources, place attachment and divergent priorities at different levels of government present powerful constraints.”

The exact wording of the report only agreed yesterday afternoon after days of debate, and a number of all-nighters wrangling over language. The Bolivians wants to stick in a line about “Mother Earth”. The Saudi delegation was pushing for the scientists to talk about the dangers of dust. Both efforts failed. – Suzanne Goldenberg

More on that last quote from the IPCC, framing climate change action as “a challenge in managing risk.”

For those who like word clouds, the Red Cross has done a quick count and found that in the 26-page summary of the report the word “risk” is used more than 230 times. The last time the IPCC released this report seven years ago, risk was only mentioned 40 times.

“Key risks by geographical region strongly echo many of the climate-related humanitarian emergencies that millions of volunteers and staff of National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies have responded to over the past decade,” said the organisation.

Some background on why the panel is really hammering just how comprehensive this report is, particularly in regards to adaption and mitigation.

The number of scientific publications available for assessing climate-change impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability more than doubled between 2005 and 2010, with especially rapid increases in publications related to adaptation, according to the IPCC.

The IPCC’s press release described the report as “bold,” arguing that it “frames managing climate change as a challenge in managing risks, using this characterisation as a starting point for two of the report’s core themes. The first is the importance of considering the full range of possible outcomes, including not only high-probability outcomes. It also considers outcomes with much lower probabilities but much, much larger consequences. Second, characterising climate change as a challenge in managing risks opens doors to a wide range of options for solutions. ”

The panel was just asked about “the pause” – which is a favourite new meme of climate change deniers, says Suzanne Goldenberg.

The panel has been pretty categorical: “There is no pause,” said Chris Field.

Michel Jarraud is going into more detail – 13 of the last 14 years were the warmest years on record. “I really refuse to accept that we can talk about a pause.”

Back in Yokohama, Suzanne Goldenberg is keeping an eye on the IPCC press conference.

The IPCC is drilling down into how climate change will affect food security. It’s complicated stuff. Crop yields are still continuing to increase, but at a much slower rate than they were at the beginning of the Green Revolution 40 years ago, and not fast enough to keep up with population growth.

But the WMO’s Michel Jarraud just raised another risk – food price shocks. Big food spike prices in 2008 pushed 44 million into poverty, and led to food riots and unrest in 14 countries in the Middle East and Africa.

Many of the big commodity crops are dominated by one producer. America for example is the biggest global producer of corn, which is set to be badly affected by hgh temperature and droughts caused by climate change.

It’s not enough just to look at average agriculture yields, said Michel Jarraud. You have to take into account the extremes.

“We know all the ingredients are there for a new food crisis you just need a few extremes climate affecting a few big producers on the planet and the crisis is there.”

More from Kathleen McInnes:
Torres Strait communities are vulnerable to even the small amounts of sea level rise. Within Australia, over $226bn in assets are under threat if sea levels rises 1.1m, including 274,000 residential homes.

On ocean warming impacts:

Climate zones have shifted south, and the East Australian Current has advanced poleward by 350km over the last 60 years. “Unprecedented” temperatures off Western Australia in 2010-2011 led to the first ever reported coral bleaching of the Ningaloo reef.

Edit: This post has been edited to more clearly differentiate between the two statements regarding sea level rises.

The report looked at extreme Australian events, highlight risks posed by flooding, heatwaves, fires, and coral bleaching, Australian scientists have told media.

Adaptation is occurring in Australia but mostly at a planning/conceptual level, according to climatologist Penelope Whetton.

Kathleen McInnes, lead author on the coastal systems and low laying areas chapter, says the global mean sea level rise is projected to be 0.28-0.98 M BY 2100, but it’s important to remember that sea levels will continue to rise beyond prediction models.

A question from the floor: was this a struggle between alarmists and non-alarmists when deciding on the language?

The question is referring to one of the 70 authors, Professor Richard Tol, who last week said he had pulled out of the writing team because it was “alarmist” about the threat of climate change.

“When you get an IPCC report, you see the position of the scientific community,” said Field.

“Every IPCC author thinks the report would be a lot better if it put more emphasis on his or her work,” joked Field.

The report is “about finding the position of the scientific community,” not just the authors, but also the thousands of scientists around the world, said Field.

Pachauri adds his two cents : “I want to pay tribute to the scientists who have the rationality and objectivity to take in a whole range of viewpoints and then come up with something that is scientifically valid and defendable.”

From Suzanne Goldenberg:

We just got to one of the really tricky sections of the report – how much will climate change hurt the bottom line? This is one area where there really isn’t much hard data, because of a lack of reliability in economic models.

One number that is out in the report is that climate change will shave between .2 and 2% of global income, if warming remains at about 2C.

That is far lower than other economists say, and it opens up the question just now: why bother to cut greenhouse gas emissions at all if that’s the limit of the cost?

Chris Field said those reports don’t take into account the full range of impacts, or plan for what might happen with catastrophic climate events, such as the melting of the Greenland ice sheet.

“We certainly wouldn’t anyone to come away from this report doing a simple comparative analysis comparing mitigation with the costs of adaptation,” Field said.

For those who want to read the summary of the report for themselves, it has now been published online here. The full report will be released at a later date.

Some assistance from my colleague Suzanne Goldenberg who is at the press conference in Yokohama.

For the uninitiated, there are two buzz words that you are going to hear a lot of just now – mitigation and adaptation.

Mitigation are the actions that governments take to reduce the emissions that cause climate change.

Adaptation is how societies protect themselves from climate change – like building sea walls as protection from sea level rise, early warning systems for more lead time on extreme weather events.

One of the underlining messages of this report, however, was that you have to have both.

With temperatures now projected to rise beyond 2 degrees C, nobody will be safe from climate change no matter how many sea walls get built, or how many cooling centres are installed to shelter people from heat waves.

On the other hand, even if you greenhouse gas emissions to zero today – which obviously isn’t going to happen – there is still enough climate change locked into the system that a lot of the bad stuff the report has warned about – heat waves, drought, wildfires, and food shortages – is still coming our way.

WWF Australia has called the report a “wake up call” to prime minister Tony Abbott.

“This latest IPCC report ramps up the urgency for the Government to put in place a credible plan to protect Australia from climate change impacts.

“That includes stronger pollution reduction targets and a price and limit on pollution to achieve those targets.”

From Amalie Obusan, Greenpeace Southeast Asia campaigner based in the Philippines:

“Let’s not get distracted by limited economic models or be blinded by global GDP. What value can you put on the lives of 8,000 people left dead or missing by typhoon Haiyan? Or what is the cost of the trauma of children being torn from their mother’s arms due to storm surges? That is the true cost of climate change that should define the urgency of the action we take.”

Climate change is going to intensify the impact of poverty, said Opondo.

People are already marginalised. “In the urban areas the poor are going to be harder hit. Africa has lots of slums, and in the slum areas there are not the proper facilities.”

Add in climate change and its effects, and people living in poverty become even more vulnerable, she said.

Pachauri has thanked Opondo for her answer but added that regional poor people are also affected because many are in a situation of subsistence living, and those near the coast face the impact of rising sea levels.

Essentially, it’s an expansion on one of the main themes of this report – the poorer people in the world are begin hit the hardest by the effects of climate change, whether they live urban or rurally.

We’ll have a full report on the press conference for you later today. In the meantime governments, environmental groups, and charities are already weighing in.

Science advisor to the White House John Holdren has released a statement in response to the IPCC report. Below is a snippet:

The IPCC’s new report underscores the need for immediate action in order to avoid the most severe impacts of climate change. It reflects scientists’ increased confidence that the kinds of harm already being experienced as a result of climate change are likely to worsen as the world continues to warm.

The report highlights the widespread and substantial observed impacts of climate change, and its growing adverse effects on livelihoods, ecosystems, economies, and human health. Importantly, it also concludes that effective adaptation measures can help build a more resilient global society in the near term and beyond.

The press conference has now ended, but there will be an hour of questions for the panel. In the meantime here are some comprehensive reports from my Guardian colleagues:

The poor will suffer most, writes Suzanne Goldenberg.
Pensioners left on their own during a heatwave in industrialised countries. Single mothers in rural areas. Workers who spend most of their days outdoors. Slum dwellers in the megacities of the developing world. These are some of the vulnerable groups who will feel the brunt of climate change as its effects become more pronounced in the coming decades.

The report is nothing new, but still dire, writes Graham Readfern
The latest blockbuster United Nations report on the impacts of climate change makes dire reading, just as the first one did almost a quarter of a century ago… Now more than 25 years after scientists started compiling that first report, the latest report is similarly alarming – just with added impacts and greater certainty.

Australia’s coastal infrastructure is in trouble, writes Oliver Milman
There is “significant change in community composition and structure of coral reefs and montane ecosystems and risk of loss of some native species in Australia” as a result of warming temperatures and ocean acidification.

“The report has a lot of bad news in it… but it also shows that people societies and governments are already taking steps,” said Field.

Another key finding here – adaption is already occurring.

A central theme is that “climate change is a challenge in managing risks,” said Field.

The average yield changes as a consequence of climate change have already been “significant,” Field outlines.

“All crops are at risk of future warming,” said Field. It’s not yet seen in soy and rice, but the impact is visible in other agricultural crops.

From Suzanne Goldenberg:

Chris Field is getting to one of the key takeaways of the report – climate change is already affecting food supply. This is the first time that the IPCC has taken a direct look at food supply and security – and the results really got the attention of government officials this last week.

Staples like wheat and maize have already shown declines in crop yields in recent decades, the report found. Projections for the years ahead are generating even more concern. Some scenarios see a big drop in yields – at a time when they need to be increasing to feed a growing population.

And it’s not just on land. Fish stocks are also on the decline, especially in the tropics, which means that there are going to be more hungry people ahead.

The IPCC report is “the top of a gigantic pyramid of scientific knowledge that’s been developed around the world over many decades,” said co-chair Christopher Field. He is now going through the key findings.

The first of which is the observed impacts of climate change are “widespread and consequential.”

“We see impacts from the equator to the poles,” said Field.

Dr Maggie Opondo, a coordinating lead author on the chapter on livelihoods and poverty, said the report is giving scientist an opportunity to “come out of their ivory towers.”

“This is a genuine opportunity to give to the world and share our knowledge with the world to make it a better place,” said Opondo.

Mici el Jarraud of the World Meteorological Organisation is now speaking. “We can no longer plead ignorance,” he said, noting the breadth, detail and strength of the science in the IPCC report.

There may still be a few question marks but this is not an excuse to not act, he said.

The next two years are “critical”, with several key intergovernmental summits and panels.

Climate change impacts include food security issues and extreme events, said Pachauri, as well as severe, pervasive, and irreversible impacts on species, and a risk of crossing environmental tipping points.

For more on the impact of climate change on food security, here is a report from Suzanne Goldenberg.

“Climate change has already cut into the global food supply and is fuelling wars and natural disasters, but governments are unprepared to protect those most at risk,” she writes.

Serious implications on food security and livelihoods will be a “severe challenge” for the poorest of the world, said Pachauri.

“The one thing that we have come up with is the importance of adaptation and mitigation choices. This is the only way that we might be able to reduce the risk of climate change.”

The press conference has now begun, with the opening statement from chairman of the IPCC, Dr Rajendra K Pachauri.

“Why should the world pay attention to this report?” asked Pachauri.

“Nobody on this planet is going to be untouched by the impacts of climate change.”

From the Guardian’s Suzanne Goldenberg in Yokohama, where the press conference is about to begin.

People are only just now beginning to filter into the cavernous conference room where the IPCC scientists have been holding their deliberations, and where the release is about to be held.

The lead authors Chris Field of the US and Vicente Barros of Argentina began this exercise under a bit of a cloud. The last big report on climate effects, in 2007, contained the erroneous statement that Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035.

It was just one mistake in a report that topped thousands of pages but it shook the IPCC’s credibility.

Commentators that deny the existence of climate change and have tried to block action on climate change used the mistake to try to undermine the entire basis of climate science.

Field and Barros were said to have put every figure in this report through a battery of fact checkers.

“Human-driven climate change poses a great threat, unprecedented in type and scale, to well-being, health and perhaps even to human survival,” write three of the contributors to the IPCC report’s health chapter.

Writing for Australia’s the Conversation, professors Colin Butler and Helen Louise Berry, and Emeritus professor Anthony McMichael say the focus has been largely on “spurious debate about the basic science and on the risks to property, iconic species and ecosystems, jobs, the GDP and the economics of taking action versus taking our chances.”

Missing from the discussion is the threat climate change poses to Earth’s life-support system – from declines in regional food yields, freshwater shortage, damage to settlements from extreme weather events and loss of habitable, especially coastal, land. The list goes on: changes in infectious disease patterns and the mental health consequences of trauma, loss, displacement and resource conflict.

You can read the rest of their piece in full here.

Before the press conference begins at 9am local time (about 25 minutes from now), we can take a look at what we already know.

There have been several drafts of the report leaked already, giving fair indication of the warnings to come from the IPCC.

According to the most recent leaked draft, the effects of climate change are already being felt “on all continents and across the oceans.”

An already approved section reveals Arctic ecosystems and warm water coral reefs are already experiencing “irreversible regime shifts.”

One of the warm water coral reefs under threat is Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. While we wait for the IPCC press conference, have a look at a stunning and comprehensive multimedia interactive put together by Guardian Australia, which examines the history, beauty and threat to the reef.

Hello, and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the release of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on climate impacts. It’s the first update to the report for seven years, and is expected to reveal some dire news about the effect of climate change on the world.

Nearly 500 people have signed off on the wording of the report, including 66 expert authors, 271 officials from 115 countries, and 57 observers.

The Guardian’s Suzanne Goldenberg is in Yokohama for the press conference. She sent us this dispatch:

The United Nations science panel is about to release an exhaustive new report on climate change at a press conference in Yokohama.

The report is the first update from the UN’s intergovernmental panel on climate change in seven years, and is seen as the definitive account on the state of the science.

Today’s report is the second of a trilogy scientists have been assembling for the last three years, scouring thousands of academic journals and government reports.

The first report, released last September in Stockholm, dealt with the physical effects of climate change. The next one, scheduled for release in Berlin next month, looks at solutions to climate change, and this one explores the effects of climate change on people and the planet.

It is an extraordinary undertaking. This report was compiled by more than 300 scientists – who fit in the work around their day jobs.

They gathered here in Yokohama last week with officials from 115 countries to review the most consequential part of the report: a 26-page densely written briefing and dozens of complicated graphics that are supposed to provide governments with all the information they need to make the right decisions on how to deal with climate change.

If only. The politics surrounding climate change – and the compilation of this report – are enormously complicated. Some of those tensions will soon be on display as Rajendra Pachauri, who heads the IPCC, takes the stage to formally release the report.