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AGU President's Message on InterAcademy Council's Recommendations to Improve the IPCC
1 September, 2010
Climate change is one of the grand challenges confronting society in the 21st century. Since 1988, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been providing exhaustive assessments of the climate system every six years based on current understanding of the science and its implications. These assessments represent the consensus of a loose knit community of more than a thousand scientists and policy experts from around the world who voluntarily contribute their time and expertise. IPCC assessments have been valuable for not only focusing attention on the climate change problem and but also for providing a credible, authoritative resource to inform mitigation and adaptation strategies worldwide.
Early this year, however, a handful of errors were identified in the 3,000-page report the IPCC issued in 2007. In the ensuing weeks, it became apparent that the IPCC lacked a formal mechanism to confirm and correct errors. Moreover, it struggled to cope with media coverage of these few weaknesses in the IPCC process. Consequently, the IPCC and the United Nations asked the InterAcademy Council (IAC) — an international consortium of the world's national academies — to investigate ways the IPCC process and procedures could be improved.
In a report released Monday, the IAC concluded that:
“…the IPCC assessment process has been successful overall and has served society well. The commitment of many thousands of the world's leading scientists and other experts to the assessment process and to the communication of the nature of our understanding of the changing climate, its impacts, and possible adaptation and mitigation strategies is a considerable achievement in its own right… [T]he IPCC has heightened public awareness of climate change, raised the level of scientific debate, and influenced the science agendas of many nations.”
While affirming the basic soundness of the IPCC's methods, the IAC report went on to say that the process could be improved to avoid future errors, increase transparency, and be more responsive to criticisms when they arise. It suggests IPCC scientists be more consistent across Working Groups when characterizing scientific uncertainty, be more inclusive of dissenting views, and streamline the review process. It also suggests that the IPCC hire more professional staff to support the effort of producing assessments, elect an Executive Director to manage day-to-day affairs, and constitute an Executive Committee to oversee activities between IPCC Plenary Sessions.
“The world has changed considerably since the creation of the IPCC, with major advances in climate science, heated controversy on some climate-related issues, and an increased focus of governments on the impacts and potential responses to changing climate,” the IAC said in its findings. “A wide variety of interests have entered the climate discussion, leading to greater overall scrutiny and demands from stakeholders. The IPCC must continue to adapt to these changing conditions in order to continue serving society well in the future.”
The American Geophysical Union affirms the basic scientific conclusions of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report and endorses the recommendations of the InterAcademy Council for improving the IPCC process. Implementing these recommendations will strengthen IPCC's efforts to ensure the best science is available to inform the public and policy makers about the reality of climate change and its consequences for the planet.
Sincerely,
Michael J. McPhaden
2010–2012 AGU President