HANGZHOU, Mar
01 – The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has agreed on the outlines
of the three Working Group contributions to the Seventh Assessment Report (AR7)
during its 62nd
Plenary session, which concluded today in Hangzhou, China.
The Panel
also approved IPCC’s overall budget for 2025.
“Despite the heavy agenda, thanks to the Panel’s ability to build and achieve multilateral consensus, and the tireless work of the IPCC’s scientific Bureau, we now have clarity on the scope of the scientific content. This allows us to put together author teams and kick start our work on the Seventh Assessment Report.” said IPCC Chair Jim Skea.
From here, governments, observer organisations
and IPCC Bureau members will nominate experts to serve as authors.
The Panel’s
agreement concludes the initial phase of defining critically important
scientific content for the Seventh Assessment Report.
The three Working
Group contributions assess the physical science basis of climate change;
impacts, adaptation and vulnerability; and mitigation of climate change.
The Panel will consider the outline of the Synthesis Report – the fourth and final instalment of the Seventh Assessment Report – at a later date. The Synthesis Report will integrate the contributions of the three Working Groups and the Special Report produced during the seventh cycle. It will be released in the second half of 2029 in line with the Panel’s decision from January 2024.
For more information, contact:
IPCC Press Office, Email: ipcc-media@wmo.int;
Notes
for Editors
What is the IPCC?
The Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change (IPCC) is the UN body for assessing the science related to
climate change. It was established by the United Nations Environment Programme
(UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in 1988 to provide
political leaders with periodic scientific assessments concerning climate
change, its implications and risks, as well as to put forward adaptation and
mitigation strategies. In the same year the UN General Assembly endorsed the
action by the WMO and UNEP in jointly establishing the IPCC. It has 195 member
states.
Thousands of people from all
over the world contribute to the work of the IPCC. For the assessment reports, scientists
and experts volunteer their time as IPCC authors to assess the thousands of
scientific papers published each year to provide a comprehensive summary of
what is known about the drivers of climate change, its impacts and future
risks, and how adaptation and mitigation can reduce those risks.
The IPCC has three working
groups: Working Group I,
dealing with the physical science basis of climate change; Working Group II,
dealing with impacts, adaptation and vulnerability; and Working Group III,
dealing with the mitigation of climate change. It also has a Task Force on National Greenhouse Gas
Inventories that develops methodologies for measuring
emissions and removals.
IPCC assessments provide
governments, at all levels, with scientific information that they can use to
develop climate policies. IPCC assessments are a key input into the
international negotiations to tackle climate change. IPCC reports are drafted
and reviewed in several stages, thus guaranteeing objectivity and transparency.
About the Seventh Assessment Cycle
Comprehensive
scientific assessment reports are published every 5 to 7 years. The IPCC is
currently in its seventh assessment cycle, which formally began in July 2023
with the elections of the new IPCC and Task Force Bureaus at the IPCC’s Plenary Session in Nairobi.
At its
first Plenary Session in the seventh assessment cycle – the 60th
Plenary Session in Istanbul, Türkiye, in January 2024 – the Panel agreed to
produce in this cycle the three Working Group contributions to the Seventh
Assessment Report (AR7), namely the Working Group I report on the Physical
Science Basis, the Working Group II report on Impacts, Adaptation and
Vulnerability and the Working Group III report on Mitigation of Climate Change.
The Synthesis Report of the Seventh Assessment Report will be produced after
the completion of the Working Group reports and released by late 2029.
The Panel
decided already during the previous cycle to produce a Special Report on
Climate Change and Cities and a Methodology Report on Short-lived Climate
Forcers during AR7.. Scientists have also been asked to deliver a Methodology
Report on Carbon Dioxide Removal Technologies, Carbon Capture Utilization and
Storage. At the IPCC’s 61st Plenary Session
held in Sofia, Bulgaria, from 27 July to 2 August 2024, the Panel agreed upon
the outlines for the Special Report on Climate Change and
Cities scheduled for approval and publication in March 2027 and for the 2027 IPCC Methodology Report on
Inventories for Short-lived Climate Forcers scheduled for publication in the
second half 2027.
In
addition, a revision of the 1994 IPCC Technical Guidelines on impacts and
adaptation as well as adaptation indicators, metrics and guidelines, will be
developed in conjunction with the Working Group II report and published as a
separate product.
IPCC’s
latest report, the Sixth Assessment Report, was completed in March 2023 with
the release of its Synthesis Report, which provided direct scientific input to
the First Global Stocktake process under the United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change at COP28 in Dubai.
The Sixth Assessment Report
comprises three Working Group contributions and a Synthesis Report. The Working
Group I contribution Climate Change 2021: the Physical
Science Basis was released on 9 August
2021. The Working Group II contribution, Climate Change 2022: Impacts,
Adaptation and Vulnerability,
was released on 28 February 2022. The Working Group III contribution, Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of
Climate Change, was released on 4 April
2022 and the Synthesis Report on 20 March 2023. The Synthesis Report to the Sixth Assessment Report, distils and
integrates the findings of the three Working Group assessments as well as the
three Special Reports released in 2018 and 2019.
The special reports were on Global Warming of 1.5°C (October 2018.), Climate Change and Land (August 2019) and, the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate
(September 2019).
For more information visit www.ipcc.ch.
The website includes outreach materials including videos about
the IPCC and video recordings from outreach events conducted as webinars
or live-streamed events.
Most videos published by the IPCC can be found on our YouTube channel.