Alexandre Magnan attends the First meeting of the authors tasked with drafting the IPCC Sixth Assessment report (AR6), which will be released in late 2021.
Between 2013 and 2014, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published its Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), which consisted of three reports. Volume One dealt with the physical aspects of the climate (covering both past trends and future projections); Volume Two focused on impacts, vulnerability, and the adaptation of ecosystems and societies, and Volume Three centred on mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. Since then, the IPCC has entered its sixth cycle, which will result in the publication of the Sixth Assessment Report in 2021-2022. It is accompanied with three Special reports: the first focuses on the impacts of a world at +1.5°C (Impacts of Global Warming of 1.5 °C Above Pre-Industrial Levels and Related Global Greenhouse Gas Emission Pathways – published in October 2018). The second and third reports, to be published at the end of 2019, deal with the ocean and the cryosphere (The Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate) and land use (Climate Change, Desertification, land Degradation, Sustainable Land Management, Food Security, and Greenhouse Gas Fluxes in Terrestrial Ecosystems). The AR6 aims to take stock of scientific knowledge, from the consequences of climate change in terms of their effects on physical and chemical processes to the impacts on our ecosystems and societies. Also covering the scope of possible responses, the contribution of the IPCC Working Group 2 (Impacts, Vulnerability, Adaptation) is structured around 18 chapters.
The drafting group brings together about 400 experts from across the globe, including Alexandre Magnan, senior research fellow at IDDRI and lead author of Chapter 16 on Key risks across sectors and regions.The drafting of this report, which will be released in late 2019, is being organized around four meetings of experts, the first of which was held in Durban South Africa, on January 21-25. During this event, two types of working sessions will be developed:
- The first will bring together the authors of the chapters with the aim of pinpointing specific content for each chapter based on the key points initially established during a pre-framework report meeting of a select panel of IPCC experts and government representatives. After finalising detailed chapter outlines, the authors divided up the writing for which they will be responsible and established a roadmap that would enable them to jointly compile a first draft of the report (internal to the IPCC) by April 25.
- The second type, i.e. plenary sessions, will be structured around presentations and discussions of topics of common interest across different chapters (for instance, time scales to consider, the use of concepts such as resilience, impacts, etc.).
