become IAS

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

• It is the UN body for assessing the science related to climate change.
• Established by the UNEP and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in 1988.
• Aim: to provide political leaders with periodic scientific assessments concerning climate change, its implications and risks, as well as to put forward adaptation and mitigation strategies.
• Composition: It has 195 member states.

The IPCC has three working groups:

1. Working Group I, dealing with the physical science basis of climate change.
2. Working Group II, dealing with impacts, adaptation and vulnerability.
3. Working Group III, dealing with the mitigation of climate change.

Context: IPCC Working Group III is meeting in India to further preparations of 6th Assessment Report.

More than 200 experts from 65 countries will come together to start preparing a first draft of the report, which is due to be finalized in July 2021. 

The meeting is hosted by the Ministry of Environment, Forest & Climate Change, Government of India.

Comprehensive scientific assessment reports are published every 6 to 7 years; the latest, the Fifth Assessment Report, was completed in 2014, and provided the main scientific input to the Paris Agreement.

What next?

1. Each of the three IPCC Working Groups will release their contributions to the Sixth Assessment Report in 2021.
2. A Synthesis Report in 2022 will integrate them together with the three special reports that the IPCC is producing in the current assessment cycle.
3. It will be released in time to inform the 2023 global stocktake by the UNFCCC when countries will review progress towards the Paris Agreement goal of keeping global warming to well below 2°C while pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5°C.

A case for differential global carbon tax

Concerns raised by the Recent IPCC report:

1. Total global emissions will need to fall by 45% from 2010 levels by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050. 
2. If these targets are not met, tropical regions of the world, which are densely populated in the global South are likely to be most negatively affected because of their low altitudes and pre-existing high temperatures. 

Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate

Report released by IPCC

Key findings:

1. Over the 21st century, the ocean is projected to transition to unprecedented conditions with increased temperatures, further ocean acidification, marine heatwaves and more frequent extreme El Niño and La Niña events.
2. The global ocean has warmed unabated since 1970 and has taken up more than 90% of the excess heat in the climate system.
3. Since 1993, the rate of ocean warming has more than doubled.
4. Marine heatwaves have very likely doubled in frequency since 1982 and are increasing in intensity.
5. Floods will become more frequent and severe in the mountainous and downstream areas of the Indus, Ganges and Brahmaputra river basins, because of an increase in extreme precipitation events.
6. The new ocean report noted that the global mean sea level had risen by 16 cm between 1902 and 2015, and that the rate of increase had doubled in the last one decade. The sea levels were rising because of:
• thermal expansion of ocean waters due to rising temperatures
• melting of glaciers and polar ice.

Other reports:

1. The World Meteorological Organization sept 2019 report- said that the period 2015-19 was the warmest 5-year period on record, and that July this year was the hottest month on record globally.
2. The IPCC special report on the 1.5°C goal - said it was possible to keep the rise in temperature to within 1.5°C, but for that the world would need to bring down its GHG emissions to half of its 2010 levels by 2030, and to net zero by 2050. Net-zero is achieved when the total emissions is balanced by the amount of absorption of carbon dioxide through natural sinks like forests, or removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through technological interventions.
3. The NDCs currently submitted have targets or action plans for 2025 or 2030. The assessment of several NDCs has concluded that these actions were not adequate to achieve the global goal of keeping temperature rise within 2°C from pre-industrial times. But the NDCs have to be updated every five years, and the countries are scheduled to do it next year.