The three-volume Climate Change 2001, published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), form the most comprehensive picture of the state of the climate and the global environment that has yet been published. Climate Change 2001 is the IPCC’s third assessment, and updates the second (1996) report with further research confirming that earlier judgements and projections of global mean temperature increases were vastly underestimated. The most up-to-date research and forecasts contained within the latest report predict that global mean temperatures could increase by as much as 5.8 degrees C by the year 2100. The IPCC also concludes that human activity is having a discernible effect on the environment, and that global temperatures are increasing at a rate unprecedented in the last thousand years.
