IPCC On Track To Release First Of Three Reports On Friday

Sep 24: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is on track to release the Working Group I (WGI) contribution to the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) – the physical science basis of climate change – Summary for Policymakers will be released on September 27, 2013. IPCC will be holding  a press conference at 10.00 AM Stockholm time. (AR5). The full report will be released in an unedited version on September 30, 2013. It will be published online in January 2014 and in book form a few months later.

 

    The Working Group II (WGII) contribution to the Fifth Assessment Report on impacts, adaptation and vulnerability will be considered in Yokohama, Japan, on March 25-29, 2014. The Working Group III (WGIII) contribution to the Fifth Assessment Report on mitigation of climate change) will be considered in Berlin, Germany, on April 7-11, 2014. Finally, the Synthesis Report (SYR) of the Fifth Assessment Report will be considered in Copenhagen, Denmark, on October 27-31, 2014.

 

    Government representatives and scientists opened a meeting of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in Stockholm, Sweden on Monday to finalize a WGI report assessing the evidence for climate change and its causes. The meeting, the culmination of four years' work by hundreds of experts who have volunteered their time and expertise to produce a comprehensive assessment, will approve the Summary for Policymakers of the first part of the IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report, subjecting it to line-by-line scrutiny. It will also accept the full report, which includes a Technical Summary, 14 chapters and several annexes, including, for the first time, an Atlas of Global and Regional Climate Projections.

 

    Qin Dahe, Co-Chair of IPCC Working Group I said, "The scientific evidence for anthropogenic climate change has strengthened year by year, leaving fewer uncertainties about the serious consequences of inaction, despite the fact that there remain knowledge gaps and uncertainties in some areas of climate science." Thomas Stocker, the other WGI Co-Chair said, "Our assessment draws on millions of measurements which permit an unprecedented and unbiased view of the state of the Earth System. Millions of billions of bytes of numerical data form the foundation for estimates of possible futures of our climate. We have produced a Summary for Policymakers that presents the findings in the clearest possible manner, a document with no compromises to scientific accuracy."

 

    A total of 259 authors and review editors were selected to produce the Working Group I report; they in turn enlisted the help of more than 600 contributing authors. Hundreds of expert reviewers provided comments to earlier drafts of the report, which draws on observations, model runs and cites more than 9,200 scientific publications. For the Fifth Assessment Report as a whole, a total of 831 authors and review editors were selected.

    Access a release from IPCC on the upcoming WGI report (click here). Access more information on the WGI and link to the report and press release as soon as it is posted (click here). Access additional information from the IPCC website (click here). [#Climate]