Independent Panel to Issue Recommendations for Improving U.N. (IPCC) Reports

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http://www.ucsusa.org/news/press_release/independent-panel-to-issue-0436.html

August 26, 2010

Independent Panel to Issue Recommendations for Improving U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Reports

Panel Likely to Find IPCC Needs to Apply Its Standards More Consistently, Science Group Says; Core IPCC Findings Not in Question

An independent panel of scientists and other experts will release a report on August 30 assessing the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) procedures for producing reports on the state of climate change science, impacts and solutions.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri asked the InterAcademy Council (IAC)—an association of science academies around the world—to convene the panel to conduct an independent review after a handful of errors were discovered in the IPCC’s most recent report, issued in 2007. The report, which fills some 3,000 pages, was the IPCC’s fourth. The IPCC, which is comprised of more than 2,500 scientists worldwide, published its first report in 1990, its second in 1995, and its third in 2001. It plans to issue its fifth report by 2014.

“I expect the Inter-Academy Council review to largely support the IPCC process, acknowledging that it produces high quality reports,” said James McCarthy, board chair of the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and a biological oceanography professor at Harvard University. “But the http://www.interacademycouncil.net/?id=12852">review also will likely recommend that the IPCC adhere more strictly to its established editorial and review policies, and establish new policies to catch errors before finalizing its reports.

“While there is always room for improvement, the bottom line is the IPCC does an admirable job presenting climate science accurately and cautiously,” added McCarthy, a former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a co-chair of the 2001 IPCC report. “In fact, some global warming impacts, such as sea level rise and Arctic sea ice loss, are occurring more quickly than IPCC reports have projected. Overall, a number of studies conducted since 2007 support the IPCC’s conclusions, including assessments by climate scientists in Europe and by the National Academy of Sciences here in the United States.”

Peter Frumhoff, UCS’s director of science and policy and a lead author of two IPCC reports, agreed that the IPCC should do a better job organizing its production process and communicating how it operates to the press and the public. But he, too, noted that recent reports from the National Academy of Sciences and others already have put to rest any doubts about the 2007 report’s core findings. “Improving the IPCC process is certainly important,” he said. “But that shouldn’t distract us from the fact that virtually all of the major conclusions in the 2007 report have been upheld. Members of Congress who still claim that scientists are uncertain over whether the climate is being disrupted by human activity and use that as an excuse to do nothing have as much credibility as a first grader saying ‘My dog ate my homework.’ ”

Frumhoff also anticipates that the IAC panel will reaffirm the importance of some highly criticized IPCC policies, such as permitting careful citations of so-called “gray” literature—reports by governments, private companies and non-governmental organizations that have not been formally peer-reviewed.

“There is often timely, policy-relevant information in government agency and private organization reports that are not formally published in the scientific literature,” Frumhoff said. “The IPCC should continue to draw upon those sources as needed, and more consistently apply and strengthen its own rigorous review standards to catch any errors.”

Doubts about the 2007 report were amplified by allegations about the contents of emails stolen last fall from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit. Independent investigations of the charges, however, determined they were unfounded. Like the small number of errors in the IPCC report, the indiscrete comments found in the emails have not called into question the fundamental conclusions of climate science.

Meanwhile, real-world evidence of climate change is accumulating. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2000 to 2009 was the hottest decade on record, and the first half of 2010 was the hottest six months on record. Periods of excessive heat, and increasing incidences of both high precipitation and drought, are consistent with model projections for a warmer world.