ISTANBUL, Jan 15 – Member governments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are meeting at the Panel’s 60th Plenary Session this week in Istanbul, Türkiye, to decide on the roadmap for the seventh cycle. The latest cycle began with the election of the new IPCC and Task Force Bureaus at the end of July 2023.
The four-day meeting is the first plenary in the seventh cycle and is scheduled to run from 16 to 19 January. The delegates of 195 member governments will consider and decide on the programme of work, including the number and scope of scientific reports the IPCC will deliver in this cycle. The Panel already decided at its 43rd Session in April 2016 that a special report on climate change and cities will be produced in the seventh cycle. It also decided at its 49th Session in May 2019 that the seventh cycle will deliver a methodology report on short-lived climate forcers.
The opening ceremony of the 60th Plenary Session is scheduled to begin at 10.00 a.m. local time in Istanbul (UTC +3) on Tuesday 16 January 2024 at the Istanbul Lutfi Kirdar International Convention and Exhibition Centre (ICEC).
During the opening ceremony the IPCC member governments and observer organisations will be addressed by the IPCC Chair Jim Skea, Türkiye’s Minister of Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change Mehmet Özhaseki, the Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme Inger Andersen, Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organization Celeste Saulo, and Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Simon Stiell.
The IPCC Plenary sessions are closed meetings, except for the opening. A recording of the opening ceremony and speeches will be posted on the IPCC website here.
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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 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 Taskforce Bureaus at the IPCC’s Plenary Session in Nairobi.
IPCC’s latest report, the Sixth Assessment Report, was completed in March 2023 with the release of its Synthesis Report, which provides 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.
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