More than 230 experts from over 70 countries will gather at the Scoping Meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia from 9 to 13 December to draft the outlines of the three Working Group contributions to the Seventh Assessment Report (AR7) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Working Group contributions are the three key pillars of the IPCC’s periodical assessment reports. They include 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.
“This is the critical first step in shaping the contents of our next report assessing the science related to climate change. In this meeting, experts will consider the scientific substance and draft the overall structure of the three Working Group contributions for governments to consider and agree upon in the Panel’s upcoming Plenary scheduled for February next year,” said IPCC Chair Jim Skea.
The Panel decided to produce its Seventh Assessment Report in January 2024 during its 60th Plenary Session in Istanbul, Türkiye.
The Seventh Assessment Report comprises the three Working Group contributions and a Synthesis Report which the IPCC decided should be ready in 2029. The Synthesis Report, which will draw together findings from the three Working Group contributions and a Special Report on Climate Change and Cities, will be the subject of a further scoping meeting.
The full set of reports assessing the latest climate change science during the seventh assessment cycle includes the Special Report on Climate Change and Cities, a Methodology Report on Short-lived Climate Forcers, a Methodology Report on Carbon Dioxide Removal Technologies, Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage and a revision and an update of the 1994 IPCC Technical Guidelines on Impacts and Adaptation including adaptation indicators, metrics and guidelines. The latter will be developed in conjunction with the Working Group II report and published as a separate product.
The Seventh Assessment Report will assess scientific findings that have been published since the completion of the Sixth Assessment Report in March 2023.
The Sixth Assessment Report clearly stated that in 2020 global warming reached 1.1°C, above pre-industrial level, driven by more than a century of burning fossil fuels as well as unequal and unsustainable energy and land use. This has resulted in more frequent and more intense extreme weather events that have caused increasingly dangerous impacts on nature and people in every region of the world. Impacts are expected to intensify with every fraction of additional warming, particularly for the most vulnerable communities, accounting for 3.3 – 3.6 billion people. This report underlined the urgency of transformative adaptation and immediate emissions reductions. It also noted that there are tools, such as renewable energy, and options across all sectors to limit warming to 1.5°C, but that progress needs to accelerate as the chances of achieving that goal are becoming increasingly thin.
Following the AR7 Scoping Meeting, IPCC Bureau Members will take part in a symposium on bridging climate science and policy to accelerate climate action organised by the government of Malysia, the British High Commission in Malaysia and the Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia.
For more information, please 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 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, distills 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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