Scientists demand annual UN climate report, not every six years

The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released Part Three of its Sixth Report in early April 2022. Climate Change 2022 – Mitigating Climate Change On the causes, consequences and solutions of the climate crisis.

This three-part analysis paints a stark picture of the “categorical” role of human society in causing climate change and its “rising and irreversible losses”. It also describes how governments with the right policies can significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and meet global climate goals. Science plays a vital role inEvidence-based advice” and inform decision makers. Corinne Le Kerry, a climate scientist at the University of East Anglia and a former member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, reported this on April 11, 2022 during the climate conference at the Royal Society in London.

However, these huge reports are only published every six to seven years because of the time it takes to study, review and compile the scientific literature. The next report is not planned until 2028, which would be too late to base the course correction, which is necessary to achieve the goals of the COP21 Paris Climate Agreement before the end of this critical decade.

The explosion of scientific literature

“The IPCC comes and goes for six or seven years and then comes back… It’s ineffective,” Le Quéré said. With an “explosion” of the scientific literature, the IPCC is playing a role in “bridging the knowledge gap to 2028,” she said.

“On average, ten scientific papers are published every day on the interaction between climate change and precipitation. Two books are published every day on the consequences of wildfires.”

“This includes weekends and holidays,” Lou Kerry said at the meeting. According to her, this indicates that techniques such as machine learning A literature review will be required for the next round of the IPCC.

Existing indicators such as the carbon budget, global average temperatures, costs of solutions such as renewable technologies and batteries, and climate impact assessments can be published without the need for a comprehensive literature review.

She explained that there should not be a full report every year, but the IPCC could issue every year and clarify our position.”

carbon budget

Le Quéré’s research focuses on the interaction between climate change and the carbon cycle in the oceans. Co-author of the Third, Fourth and Fifth Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. She was also the driving force behind the annual publication of the Global Carbon Budget, which assesses emissions each year and monitors the remainder of the global carbon budget.

During her talk, she said that while some well-established climate indicators, such as the carbon budget, are already updated annually by scientists, the process for doing so is “messy” and gets less media coverage than the IPCC.

Le Quéré hopes that annual updates on some of the key climate indicators and society’s response to them will better inform policymakers about the planet’s trajectory. As a climate advisor to the French and British governments, she knows what can get policymakers excited.

New technologies and digital platforms can also be used to share knowledge and facilitate access to the latest science. “I would like to see the IPCC move in that direction,” she says.

As an intergovernmental body of the United Nations, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change needs a mandate from member states to prepare annual reports. Le Quéré and like-minded scientists are exploring whether a country could sponsor the proposal at the COP27 climate talks in November 2022 in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, or at the United Nations General Assembly. “The initiative is still in its early stages,” she said.

This article originally appeared on IPS Partner Key Climate News