The Associated Press has obtained a copy of a draft report by The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change sent to governments on Monday. The report states that the impact of climate change is already being felt and that the impact could be catastrophic by the end of the century without dramatic action to curb emissions.

The Nobel Prize-winning group reports that while emissions are falling in most Western countries, it is not enough to offset the increases in developing nations. Those countries are primarily focused on the more immediate goal of reducing poverty. China, which now uses half of the worlds coal to produce goods, most of which are bound for the West, is of particular concern.

The report uses the strongest language yet to lay out the current state of and potential risk from climate change.

“Human influence has been detected in warming of the atmosphere and the ocean, in changes in the global water cycle, in reduction in snow and ice, and in global mean-sea-level rise; and it is extremely likely to have been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century. The risk of abrupt and irreversible change increases as the magnitude of the warming increases,” says the report, according to the New York Times.

Currently observable impacts of climate change, listed by the UN panel, include heat waves, flooding and droughts as well as extreme weather and rising sea levels.

In 2009, the international community set a goal of keeping global warming to a maximum of two degrees Fahrenheit. The report states that this goal is, while theoretically still possible, highly unlikely to be reached. It is likely that by 2050 temperatures will increase by 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, and, without strong action, 6.7 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century.

In addition to more extreme weather and droughts, this would result in an increased loss of crop land, damage to marine ecosystems and could worsen violent conflicts and refugee problems. Additionally the likely loss of the Greenland ice sheet and much of the Antarctic ice would result in a 23 foot sea level rise, which would flood many coastal cities.

The committee warns that no more than one-quarter of currently known fossil fuel reserves can be burned without causing irreversible warming.

The 127 draft report combines three earlier reports, and will be edited line by line by governments and scientists at a conference in Copenhagen in October.