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IPCC - What is it all about?
Joint TRICUSO - OceanICU Webinar
Thursday, 6 November | 14:00 (CET)
Unpacking the IPCC
Established in 1988, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a United Nations body for assessing the science related to climate change. Its assessment reports are compiled by leading scientists and are endorsed worldwide by member governments and scientists. However, its complex process can seem elusive and its requirements from scientists laborious and unpaid.
What’s the real story? This webinar unpacks the process—outlining how it works and how it helps the scientific community—from the perspective of previous authors and newly elected authors.
We explored commonly pondered questions, such as:
How are the reports used?
How do they feed into policy?
What are the personal motivations for scientists willing to invest the necessary time and effort to contribute?
Visit IPCC for more information.
View the questions from the audience at the bottom of this page.
Meet the Panellists
Stephanie Henson
(NOC)
Alessandro Tagliabue
(University of Liverpool)
Peter Landschützer
(VLIZ)
Sandy Thomalla
(CSIR)
Questions from the Audience
Answered by Stephanie Henson
How do you reconcile scientific uncertainty with the need for clear messaging?Is it your skill and judgment as a scientist that leads to that, or is there some formal way that you can decide what level of certainty to attach to something?
It’s not about your skill and judgment as a scientist to make that assessment of uncertainty or likelihood language. The IPCC lays out guidelines about the uncertainty. The likelihood has quantitative numbers associated with this, for example 99% certain to happen, or 50% chance of happening. So if you are unable from the literature to determine what the likelihood of something is, or how certain we are about something, it doesn’t get into the report because you can’t assign it a certainty.
There are high confidence and low confidence statements that are included, although they don’t have quantitative numbers underlying them. The guideline states that if there’s loads of information out there and everybody seems to have consensus about a particular process, then you can give it high confidence. But otherwise, you have to be specific about the low confidence.
Should the IPCC implement formal mechanisms to include and mentor early-career researchers (ECRs)?
There is an effort to include ECRs within the IPCC. That is one of the criteria for selecting authors. There are definitely people who were on the ECR end which is really nice to see. Did we get training? Probably not centrally from the IPCC. But there were a lot of talks with different people about the lead author meetings and finding out how it all works and how it is done.
Answered by Alessandro Tagliabue
Is there any censorship? Are you ever told you can't say something?
No, I want to just say that you can’t be policy prescriptive. That’s the mantra, you can’t prescribe a solution. The IPCC always say they’re not policy prescriptive. So if you start drifting into saying things like we should enact this action, then you might get pulled back. There is no censorship but there’s scoping.
The idea that someone would say, you can’t say this because you’re not conforming to some perceived orthodoxy about climate change. It is not true. That doesn’t happen.
Should the IPCC implement formal mechanisms to include and mentor early-career researchers (ECRs)?
There is a certain balance by the IPCC. There would be in any chapter a blend of new and more experienced authors. You don’t get formal training, there are some webinars. Everything is so specific to what each group is researching that it would be very difficult to provide general training.
Do you plan to communicate about your experience as an author for the seventh assessment report of the IPCC?
Of course, there will be interesting moments or after the lead author meetings. We could update after key milestones.
Answered by Sandy Thomalla
Should the IPCC implement formal mechanisms to include and mentor early-career researchers (ECRs)?
I got an email from the IPCC to fill out a survey to indicate where I need help. For the new African authors of the AR7 they are gathering information with the intention to make sure that we get the most help and support.
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This work was funded by the European Union under grant agreement no. 101188028. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Executive Agency (REA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them. Â
