The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is an intergovernmental body of the United Nations responsible for advancing knowledge on human-induced climate change.

Significance and objectives

• The IPCC prepares comprehensive Assessment Reports about the state of scientific, technical and socio-economic knowledge on climate change, its impacts and future risks, and options for reducing the rate at which climate change is taking place.
• It also produces Special Reports on topics agreed to by its member governments, as well as Methodology Reports that provide guidelines for the preparation of greenhouse gas inventories.
• The IPCC was created to provide policymakers with regular scientific assessments on climate change, its implications and potential future risks, as well as to put forward adaptation and mitigation options.

• Its main activity is to prepare Assessment Reports, special reports, and methodology reports assessing the state of knowledge of climate change.
• However, the IPCC does not itself engage in scientific research. Instead, it asks scientists from around the world to go through all the relevant scientific literature related to climate change and draw up the logical conclusions

Importance of these reports

• The IPCC’s Assessment Reports (ARs), which are produced every few years, are the most comprehensive and widely accepted scientific evaluations of the state of the Earth’s climate. They form the basis for government policies to tackle climate change, and provide the scientific foundation for the international climate change negotiations. Six Assessment Reports have been published so far. the sixth report (AR6) coming in three parts.
• The first part of AR6 flagged more intense and frequent heat-waves, increased incidents of extreme rainfall, a dangerous rise in sea-levels, prolonged droughts, and melting glaciers — and said that 1.5 degrees Celsius warming was much closer than was thought earlier, and also inevitable. The second part warned that multiple climate change-induced disasters were likely in the next two decades even if strong action was taken to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases.
• The first Assessment Report (1990) noted that emissions resulting from human activities are substantially increasing the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. This report formed the basis for the negotiation of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 1992, known as the Rio Summit.
• The second Assessment Report (1995) revised the projected rise in global temperatures to 3 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by 2100, and sea-level rise to 50 cm, in light of more evidence. AR2 was the scientific underpinning for the Kyoto Protocol of 1997.
• The third Assessment Report (2001) revised the projected rise in global temperatures to 1.4 to 5.8 degrees Celsius by 2100 compared to 1990. The projected rate of warming was unprecedented in the last 10,000 years. The report presented new and stronger evidence to show global warming was mostly attributable to human activities.
• The fourth Assessment Report (2007) said greenhouse gas emissions increased by 70 per cent between 1970 and 2004, and atmospheric concentrations of CO2 in 2005 (379 ppm) were the most in 650,000 years. The report won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for IPCC. It was the scientific input for the 2009 Copenhagen climate meeting.
• The fifth Assessment Report (2014) said more than half the temperature rise since 1950 was attributable to human activities, and that the atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide were “unprecedented” in the last 800,000 years. The rise in global temperatures by 2100 could be as high as 4.8 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial times, and more frequent and longer heat waves were “virtually certain”. A “large fraction of species” faced extinction, and food security would be undermined, it said.
• AR5 formed the scientific basis for negotiations of the Paris Agreement in 2015.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change revealed “a litany of broken climate promises” by governments and corporations, accusing them of stoking global warming by clinging to harmful fossil fuels.

https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/everyday-explainers/explained-what-is-the-ipcc-and-why-are-its-assessment-reports-important-7852860/

How to structure:

1. Give a brief intro about IPCC
2. Explain its significance and objectives
3. Analyse the importance of IPCC reports
4. Conclude