The report is the first installment of the latest climate change assessment by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It focuses on the physical science of climate change, and reports on the current state of the climate, possible climate futures, risk assessment and limiting future climate change. There is strong confidence that human influence on the climate system is the main driver of retreating glaciers worldwide, the shrinking extent of Arctic sea ice, the declining springtime snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere and a rising sea level.