A lot of IPCC work is publishing reports about the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), an international agreement that human inventions and chemistry may make the Earth too hot to live on. The UNFCCC was the beginning of the Kyoto Protocol. Members of the IPCC read, write, and calculate as much as they can. Only member states of the WMO and UNEP may be members of IPCC.
A lot of professors trust the IPCC work.
The first IPCC report was published in 1990. More was added to that report in 1992. The second report was published in 1995, the third was published in 2001, and a fourth in 2007. Each report is in three books called Working Groups 1, 2 and 3. Most times "the IPCC report" means the Working Group I report, which is about basic climate change.
The Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) was completed in early 2007. Like earlier IPCC reports, it contains four reports, three of them from its working groups.
Working Group 1 was about the "Physical Science Basis of Climate Change."
The Working Group 1 report was published on February 2 2007 and revised on February 2007. There was also a February 2 2007 press release. The full Working Group 1 report was published in March. The main report says:
The Summary for Policymakers for the Working Group 2 (IPCC wg2 ) report was published on April 6, 2007.
The Summary for Policymakers for the Working Group 3 report was published on May 4, 2007.
The Third Assessment Report (TAR) contains four reports, three of them from its working groups:
The "headlines" from the Summary for Policymakers in "The Scientific Basis" were:
The estimate for the climate sensitivity was 1.5 to 4.5 °C; and the average temperature was predicted to increase by 1.4 to 5.8 Celsius degrees between 1990 and 2100, and the sea level was predicted to rise between 0.1 and 0.9 meters. The range of predictions is based on different levels of human carbon dioxide production. Each perdiction has different possible outcomes.
MIT professor Richard Lindzen, who works for the IPCC Working Group 1, claims some of the IPCC reports are wrong. He told the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation that he was unhappy about the Executive Summary based on his work in May 2001. He said that he told the IPCC they were making mistakes and the Working Group 1 report said that meant they were "making improvements".
Professor Lindzen said:
The summary does not reflect the full document... For example, I worked on Chapter 7, Physical Processes. This chapter dealt with the nature of the basic processes which determine the response of climate, and found numerous problems with model treatments – including those of clouds and water vapor. The chapter was summarized with the following sentence: 'Understanding of climate processes and their incorporation in climate models have improved, including water vapor, sea-ice dynamics, and ocean heat transport.'
The Working Group 1 report said:
"Climate Change 1995", the IPCC Second Assessment Report (SAR), was finished in 1996. It was made in four parts:
Each of the working groups was made by its own working group, and each has a Summary for Policymakers (SPM) that is a list of agreements by governments. The Summary for Policy Makers of the Working Group 1 report says:
Three scientists involved in climate research believe that the IPCC reports do not accurately summarize the state of knowledge.
On December 20, 1995, Reuters news agency claimed a British scientist Keith Shine, one of IPCC's most important authors, talking about the Policymakers' Summary, said: "We produce a draft, and then the policymakers go through it line by line and change the way it is presented... It's peculiar that they have the final say in what goes into a scientists' report". Keith Shine did not say what differences the changes make.
Frederick Seitz, a physicist of Rockefeller University, said the IPCC report was not good, writing "I have never witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the peer-review process than the events that led to this IPCC report". He opposed it in the Leipzig Declaration of S. Fred Singer's Science and Environmental Policy Project.
Professor Seitzs comments were opposed by the presidents of the American Meteorological Society and University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, who wrote about an effort by some people make it seem that humans had not changed the climate. Special insert .
S. Fred Singer said that :
Benjamin D. Santer, Lead Author of Chapter 8 of 1995 IPCC Working Group 1 report, said :
The Second Assessment Report was the only one with a chapter on the economic effect of climate change. This part of the report was thought to be unfair because the value of life in poorer countries was less.
The 1992 supplementary report was an update of the 1990 report, requested for the Framework Convention on Climate Change at the Earth Summit (United Nations Conference on Environment and Development) in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.
It did not make any important changes to the 1990 report. It claimed the prediction methods in the First Assessment Report, were now improved, but did not include aerosol or ozone changes.
The IPCC first assessment report was completed in 1990, and used to make the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
The Working Group 1 report says:
The Chairperson of the IPCC is Rajendra K. Pachauri, elected in May 2002; before that Robert Watson headed the IPCC. The chairperson is helped by an elected Bureau including vice-chairpersons, Working Group co-chairpersons and a Secretariat (see below).
The IPCC Panel is made of people from governments and other groups. Scientific experts are preferred. Meetings of the IPCC and IPCC Working Groups are held by members of governments. Non-Governmental and Intergovernmenta Organizations may be allowed to attend as observers. Meetings of the IPCC Bureau, workshops, experts and lead authors are by invitation only. 350 government officials and climate change experts visited the 2003 meeting. The meeting report says there were 322 persons in attendance at meetings with about seven-eighths of visitors being from governments.
There are several major groups:
The IPCC receives funding from UNEP, WMO, and its own Trust Fund which gets money from governments.
People from over 130 countries contributed to the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report over 6 years. These people included more than 2500 scientific expert reviewers, more than 800 contributing authors, and more than 450 lead authors.
The Working Group 1 report of 2007 (including the summary for policy makers) included contributions by 600 authors from 40 countries, over 620 expert reviewers, a large number of government reviewers, and representatives from 113 governments.
The IPCC activities are controlled by the WMO Executive Council and UNEP Governing Council to support the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
In April 2006, the IPCC released the "IPCC Fourth Assessment Report" or AR4. Reports of the workshops held so far are available at the IPCC website.
The AR4 Synthesis Report (SYR) was finalized in November 2007. Documentation on the meetings for the AR4 are available , the outlines for the Working Group 1 report and a provisional author list .
The IPCC also supports other activities, such as the Data Distribution Centre Welcome to the IPCC Data Distribution Centre and the National Greenhouse Gas Inventories Programme IPCC - Task Force on National Greenhouse Gas Inventories. This involves estimating greenhouse gas based on the levels of fuel used, industrial production and so on.
The IPCC also answers questions from the UNFCCC Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA).
The IPCC reports are a collection of peer reviewed and published science. Each IPCC report explains improvements to the previous report and also explains where more research is needed.
There are usually three stages in the review :