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IPCC Fifth Assessment Cycle |
The IPCC has started the Fifth Assessment cycle, which will include the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), Special Reports and Expert Meetings agreed by the Plenary. A summary of the IPCC process can be found here for HTML and here for PDF.
| IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) | |
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AR5 is scheduled to be finalized in 2014. As has been the case in the past, the outline of the AR5 was developed through a scoping process that involved climate change experts from all relevant disciplines, as well as users of IPCC reports, such as government representatives. One scoping meeting to outline the AR5 was held 13-17 July 2009 in Venice, Italy. Invited experts from governments and academia discussed and developed the scope and table of contents for the three Working Groups contributions to the AR5. They also identified major issues of integration and synthesis. During its 9th Session (26-27 October 2009), the IPCC WGII finalized and approved the chapter outlines of the WGII contribution to the AR5. The WGII outline (html or PDF), as well as those for Working Groups I and III, was then accepted by the 31st Session of the IPCC on 29 October 2009 in Bali, Indonesia. Information on the Working Group I contribution to the AR5 can be found here, and on the Working Group III contribution here. On 15 January 2010, governments and participating organizations were invited to nominate experts to act as authors and reviewers for the three Working Group contributions to the AR5. Authors will be selected by the IPCC Bureau, as stipulated in the IPCC procedures. Nomination instructions can be found here. The writing process will start in the second half of 2010 for Working Group I and early 2011 for Working Groups II and III. A separate scoping meeting for the AR5 Synthesis Report will be held in summer 2010 and the Synthesis Report itself is now scheduled to be released by September 2014, thus completing the AR5 cycle within a 12 month period from the release of the Working Group I contribution (September 2013). In addition to meetings of Lead Authors for the AR5, a number of expert meetings and workshops will be held to broaden the basis for the assessment, for instance to address issues where limited peer reviewed literature exists, as well as to address cross-cutting matters. Click here for the provisional WGII AR5 development schedule, and here for the complete set of meetings associated with current WGII commitments. Please see the WGII AR5 page for further information. |
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| IPCC Special Reports | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The WGII produces also Special Reports often in response to requests from the Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC, or from other environmental Conventions. Special Reports have been prepared on topics such as aviation, regional impacts of climate change, technology transfer, emissions scenarios, land use, land use change and forestry, carbon dioxide capture and storage and on the relationship between safeguarding the ozone layer and the global climate system. They are subject to the same writing, review and approval process as Assessment Reports. The preparation of the Special Report on "Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation" commenced as its outline was approved by the Panel at its 30th Session last April. This Special Report will consider three types of extreme events: the ones for which climate change has or will amplify occurrence - as floods and droughts; the ones in which trends outside the domain of climate will increase exposure or vulnerability to climate-related extremes - for instance coastal development increasing exposure to storm surges; and new kinds of potentially hazardous events and conditions that may occur as a result of climate change - such as glacial lakes outburst. The report will include 9 chapters. Three of them will focus on managing the risk at different levels in the society: community based responses; national scale and international responses. Two main case studies will be carried out throughout all chapters, while the last chapter will be entirely dedicated to case studies. The UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR) will participate in the preparation of the report which is planned to be released in 2011. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
