Climate Change Insight: The IPCC and the Assessment Reports - Based on fact rather than fiction.

Recent media reports have been speculating that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is likely to backtrack on the level of global warming which has occured and instead state that global warming has only been around  half  of the level presented in its' previous reports. This odd media speculation has already been found to be based on various false and misleading statements without evidence nor facts. Correspondingly the IPCC is about to release the first stage of its' Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) with the other parts to be delivered progressively over 2013–2014.

When the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) releases one of its major reports, it’s an assessment that collects and summarises current knowledge regarding climate change. This is undertaken using peer reviewed literature and unreviewed (grey) sources of science data. The reports from the IPCC are considered to be the leading review globally of climate change and are drafted and reviewed literally by a team of hundreds of scientists and specialists from a diverse range of disciplines.

The IPCC itself is organised into three Working Groups and a Taskforce.  Working Group I covers “The Physical Science Basis of Climate Change”, Working Group II addresses “Climate Change Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability”, and Working Group III deals with “Mitigation of Climate Change”. The Task Force refines the methodology for the calculation and reporting of national greenhouse gas emissions and reductions. All these groups have two co-chairs, one from a developed country and one from a developing country.

To given an idea of the scale of involvement from the worldwide science communtiy, the First Order Draft of Working Group I for the forthcoming AR5 report for example received 21,400 comments from 659 experts. The AR5’s Second Order Draft for Working Group I received 31,422 comments from about 800 experts and 26 governments.

 

The timeline for the three key areas examined in the AR5 are:

• the physical science – Working Group I (September 2013)
• impacts, vulnerabilities and adaptation – Working Group II (March 2014)
• mitigation options scenarios – Working Group III (April 2014) 

A final synthesis report to be released in October 2014, will provide an overview of all of these three areas.