The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) opened a four-day-long meeting of experts on Monday, April 25, 2022, in Dublin, Ireland, to advance preparations of the Synthesis Report, the final product of its Sixth Assessment Cycle.
The Members of the Synthesis Report Core Writing Team are meeting from April 25 to 28 to continue drafting the Synthesis Report, which brings together the key findings of the three Working Group contributions to the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) and the Special Reports prepared by the IPCC in this assessment cycle.
The meeting follows the release of the three Working Group contributions to the Sixth Assessment Report, “Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis”, by IPCC Working Group I in August 2021; “Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability”, by Working Group II in March 2022; and “Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change”, by Working Group III in April 2022.
With the Synthesis Report, to be finalised in September 2022, the Sixth Assessment Report will provide policymakers with the most comprehensive assessment of scientific information related to climate change in the IPCC’s history. The previous IPCC assessment report was published in 2013/2014.
“The Synthesis Report will be vital to informing policymakers when they meet in Egypt for the next Conference of the Parties,” said IPCC Chair Hoesung Lee. “It will summarise the most authoritative assessment yet of climate change and give policymakers options for how to prevent and adapt to climate change.”
The meeting is the third official gathering of the Sixth Assessment Report Core Writing Team, and the first time that the Synthesis Report authors are meeting in person, having worked remotely from the start, over hundreds of virtual hours, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Synthesis Report underwent an internal review from May 31 to July 25, 2021. The authors then completed the First Order Draft of the Synthesis Report, which underwent a Government and Expert Review from January 10 to March 20, 2022. In this third official meeting, the authors are considering the 10,424 comments received on the First Order Draft from 360 reviewers.
The Synthesis Report will integrate the three most recent IPCC Special Reports on “Global Warming of 1.5°C, Climate Change and Land, and The Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate”, as well as the contents of the three Working Group contributions to the Sixth Assessment Report: Working Group I – The Physical Science Basis, Working Group II – Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, and Working Group III– Mitigation of Climate Change.
