IPCC to deliver ‘synthesis’ report only by end of 2029

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is expected to deliver three special subject reports by the end of 2027 ahead of the second global stocktake of the Paris Agreement in 2028, but the final synthesis report will only be produced by the end of 2029, the panel has decided.

Agreeing on a shorter timeline after intense debates at the 60th session of the IPCC in Istanbul between January 16 and 20, the panel decided to deliver three working group reports sometime between 2028 and 2029.

A detailed timetables will be discussed at the next plenary in July, Jim Skea, IPCC chair told HT.

“The Special Report on Climate Change and Cities will be provided in early 2027 and a Methodology Report on Short-lived Climate Forcers by 2027. In addition, the Methodology Report on Carbon Dioxide Removal Technologies, Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage is to be delivered by the end of 2027,” Skea said.

“While the more detailed timetable will be discussed in the next Plenary in July, the Panel has also decided that the Synthesis Report will be produced by late 2029 — after the publication of contributions from the three Working Groups,” he said.

HT on January 29 reported that the session in Istanbul was fraught with intense debates on how and when the panel will inform the world about the state of the crisis.

India along with other developing countries flagged concerns over attempts by developed nations, led by the US, to shorten the timeline for the delivery of the 7th assessment cycle report, people familiar with the matter said.

Developing nations contented that while a quick cycle will help in building momentum ahead of the second GST, it will fail to adequately reflect new climate science published by developing nations like India.

While developing nations wanted focus on adaptation measures and climate finance, richer nations are focused on mitigation targets and ensuring that emerging economies (that may not be historically responsible for present crisis), contribute adequately to mitigation.

Skea said that the decision on the timeline signals the importance member countries attach to “receiving policy-relevant, timely and actionable scientific information”.

“It also must be stressed that in adopting IPCC’s programme of work, the member governments emphasised that the IPCC Seventh Assessment Cycle will be robust, comprehensive, accurate, inclusive and use diverse literature and knowledge sources, including drawing on Indigenous Peoples’ Knowledge and Local Communities’ Knowledge,” he said.

To address concerns of developing countries for better representation in the seventh cycle, the panel is trying to recruit early career scientists from poorer nations.

“There will be clear cut-off dates for the published scientific work to be assessed by each report. Any literature that misses a cut-off date can be considered in subsequent assessments. On this point, as the Chair of the IPCC, I consistently stress my priority to ensure the balance between developed and developing country authors as well as to expand and formalise roles for early-career scientists from developing countries as chapter scientists and promote capacity building amongst the under-represented. We are also fostering opportunities to build a network of early career scientists, engaging the current cohort of IPCC scholarship recipients,” Skea said.

There will be several IPCC reports delivered in time to feed into the processes under the UNFCCC, including the GST, he said.

The IPCC informs governments about the state of knowledge of climate crisis by examining all relevant literature on the subject. The panel completed its sixth assessment cycle last year with the Synthesis Report — a summary of its earlier reports — releasing in March 2023.

The timeline for IPCC’s reports is particularly important because for the first time, global warming has exceeded 1.5°C for an entire year, the EU’s climate service said on Thursday. The period from February 2023 to January 2024 reached 1.52°C of warming, breaching the 1.5°C goal set in the Paris Agreement.

To be sure, a monthly or even yearly breach of 1.5°C – a key threshold under the Paris Agreement beyond which multiple tipping points could be triggered leading to cascading effects for the climate system — does not automatically mean that the goal has been exceeded.

Last year was the warmest year ever, overtaking the last record set in 2016 by a large margin, the Copernicus Climate Change Service had said in January.

The year was 0.60°C warmer than the 1991-2020 average, and 1.48°C warmer than the 1850-1900 pre-industrial average, barely below the 1.5°C limit.

Experts highlighted that with severe warming, the developing world needs IPCC guidance on adaptation.

“The 2030s will be the decade of climate action. And our knowledge around adaptation actions and this effectiveness is much more limited than what we know about mitigation because of the nature of the literature. Therefore, the product planned on adaptation, metrics and indicators is a very important one for developing countries, and focusing well on that will help developing countries take tangible adaptation action and developed countries fund those actions. Now when it comes to the physical basis of climate change, AR6 already presented the state of the art and I don’t think there would be a lot of new insights in AR7 on that particular front from now till the end of the cycle,” said Aditi Mukherji, director, Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation Impact Action Platform of the CGIAR and IPCC author.

“Meanwhile, the research community, the practitioner community really needs to focus more on adaptation related knowledge which is where most of the developing countries are also interested in. So, in balance a long cycle should work out fine as long as the developed countries and the historical emitters also keep mitigating along the lines shown in AR6, there is no alternative to rapid mitigation by countries in the Global North and for that, we don’t need another report,” she added.