GENEVA, July 17 – The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will be electing its new Bureau and the Bureau of the Task Force on National Greenhouse Gas Inventories (TFI) during its 59th Session to be held in Nairobi, Kenya, from 25 to 28 July 2023, hosted by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Kenyan government.
The new IPCC Bureau, including the Chair of the IPCC, will serve for the duration of the next seventh assessment cycle, which starts after the election of the new Bureau.
The new IPCC Chair is scheduled to be elected during the week of 25-28 July 2023. Following the election of the Chair, the IPCC will issue a press release and will inform the media about any additional press arrangements.
The current list of candidates for the IPCC Chair and the entire IPCC and TFI Bureaus is available here.
A briefing note explaining the IPCC election process is here.
Opening ceremony
The 59th Plenary Session of the IPCC will begin at 10.00 am EAT (9 am CEST) on Tuesday, 25 July in Conference Room 2 at the United Nations Gigiri complex in Nairobi.
During the opening ceremony, the delegates of 195 member governments will be addressed by the representative of the Kenyan government, the current IPCC Chair Hoesung Lee, the Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organization Petteri Taalas, and the Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme Inger Andersen.
The election session of the IPCC is closed.
The media representatives interested in the opening ceremony of the IPCC’s 59th session should contact ipcc-media@wmo.int.
For more information, contact:
IPCC Press Office, Email: ipcc-media@wmo.int
Andrej Mahecic, +41 22 730 8516 or Werani Zabula, +41 22 730 8120
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, 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 Sixth Assessment Cycle
Comprehensive scientific assessment reports are published every 6 to 7 years; the latest, the Sixth Assessment Report, was completed in 2023 and will provide the main scientific input to global stocktake process under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
In the sixth assessment cycle the Panel produced three Special Reports, a Methodology Report and the Sixth Assessment Report.
The Working Group I contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report 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, distills and integrates the findings of the three Working Group assessments as well as the three Special Reports released in 2018 and 2019.
The IPCC special reports have focused on more specific issues:
Global Warming of 1.5°C, an IPCC special report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty was launched in October 2018.
Climate Change and Land, an IPCC special report on climate change, desertification, land degradation, sustainable land management, food security, and greenhouse gas fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems was launched in August 2019, and the Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate was released in September 2019.
Additionally, in May 2019, the IPCC released the 2019 Refinement to the 2006 IPCC Guidelines on National Greenhouse Gas Inventories, an update to the methodology used by governments to estimate their greenhouse gas emissions and removals.
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.
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