Key takeaways from the U.N. climate panel's report

The U.N. climate panel has released its most comprehensive assessment of climate change yet.

And it doesn't make for a cheerful read.

(SOUNDBITE) (English) IPCC AUTHOR, CLIMATE SCIENTIST AT THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD AND CO-LEADER OF THE WORLD WEATHER ATTRIBUTION, FRIEDERIKE OTTO, SAYING:

"Climate change is a fact, it's already happening, it's no matter what not going to go away."

Drawing on more than 14,000 scientific studies, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - IPCC - report sounded a dire warning:

The world is dangerously close to runaway warming…and greenhouse gas levels are high enough to guarantee climate disruption for decades.

Here are some of the report's main takeaways.

Humans are to blame. Full stop.

The first line of the report reads: ''It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land."

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres described the report as a "code red for humanity."

The report describes possible futures depending on how dramatically the world cuts emissions.

Even the severest of cuts are unlikely to prevent global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial temperatures.

But Without immediate steep emissions cuts, average temperatures could cruise past 2 degrees Celsius by the end of the 21st century.

Friederike Otto is a climate scientist at Oxford University and an IPCC co-author.

"There is no denying that some of the impacts are irreversible on centuries, on timescales of centuries to come. And this is really important to know, also that climate change is a fact, it's already happening, it's no matter what not going to go away, so adapting to climate change is something as a policy maker you would probably want to keep in mind."

Weather extremes once considered rare or unprecedented are becoming more common.

Severe heat waves that happened only once every 50 years are now happening roughly once a decade.

Tropical cyclones are getting stronger.

Most land areas are seeing more rain or snow fall in a year.

Severe droughts are happening 1.7 times as often.

And fire seasons are getting longer and more intense.

Even if global warming were halted at 1.5 degree Celsius, the average sea level would still rise about 6 to 10 feet, and maybe more.

Summertime sea ice atop the Arctic Ocean will vanish entirely at least once by 2050 – and that’s the IPCC’s most optimistic scenario.

The report comes just three months before COP26 - a major U.N. climate conference taking place in Glasgow.

Nations will now be under even more pressure to pledge more ambitious climate action, and substantial financing to go with iT.

Greenpeace UK Executive Director John Sauven says the world needs to take note of this report and act immediately.

(SOUNDBITE) (English) GREENPEACE UK EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, JOHN SAUVEN, SAYING:"Scientists can produce reports, but scientists can't save the world. They can just tell us what is happening. This is absolutely down to governments. And there are only a few critical governments which are really important.//If you look at China, China is responsible for more than a quarter of the world's emissions. We cannot solve this problem without China acting.//As does financial centres like the city of London. There's a lot of private finance going into new fossil fuelled projects, which also needs to stop."