Wonder how the global mean surface temperature increase in 2100 are predicted using four Green House Gas emission scenarios for population, economic growth and carbon use? Maybe you have already heard from our climate change talk on Sat, 14.10.2017 in Arkadia that there is a organization called the ‘Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’ doing assessment of climate change. Serious business isn’t it?
Established by United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in 1988, IPCC is the leading international body for assessment of climate change. It currently has 195 member countries and thousands of scientists from all over the world contributing to its work voluntarily as authors, contributors and reviewers.
One of the main IPCC activities is the preparation of comprehensive Assessment Reports about the state of scientific, technical and socio-economic knowledge on climate change, its causes, potential impacts and response strategies. Assessment reports about ‘The Physical Science Basis’, ‘Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability’ and ‘Mitigation of Climate Change’ are produced by its three working groups and serve as guidance for the decision makers.
The latest report, the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) was released between September 2013 and November 2014 and can be read and downloaded freely online:
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_and_data_reports.shtml
The IPCC is currently in its Sixth Assessment cycle. And the deadline for the nominations of authors is Friday the 27th of this month! AR6 will be finalized in 2021 and the AR6 Synthesis Report will be finalized in the first half of 2022, in time for the first UNFCCC global stocktake in 2023 under the Paris Agreement.
Additionally IPCC provides scholarships for Ph.D students and post-doctoral researchers from developing countries with priority given to students from Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and Small Island Developing States (SIDS).
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipcc-scholarship-programme/ipcc_scholarshipprogramme.shtml
Um, one of my career goals is to serve as an IPCC report author!
Written by Yongmei Gong