SINGAPORE – The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) outlined of the Synthesis Report for the Sixth Assessment Report, which will provide policymakers in 2022 with the most up-to-date scientific information related to climate change.
The Synthesis Report will integrate the findings of all the reports that the IPCC is working on in its current assessment cycle for the Sixth Assessment Report. It is timed to be available in 2022, one year before the first global stocktake under the Paris Agreement when governments will review the targets they set under the accord and their progress towards implementing them.
The scoping meeting, hosted by the Government of Singapore, runs from 21 to 23 October and brings together 80 experts from some 38 countries and IPCC Bureau members. It will be followed by a Session of the IPCC Bureau on 24-25 October.
“We will make this Synthesis Report not only a value-added document for policymakers, providing the best available science, as did all previous synthesis reports, but also a more useful resource for policy leaders around the globe,” said IPCC Chair Hoesung Lee, who is leading the preparation and writing of the report.
Over the past 12 months the IPCC, the world’s leading body for assessing the science related to climate change, has released three special reports – on global warming of 1.5ºC, on land use, and on the ocean and cryosphere – and a methodology report. The three IPCC Working Groups are now preparing their contributions to the Sixth Assessment Report, which will be released in 2021.
The scoping meeting in Singapore will draft the outline or contents of the Synthesis Report for consideration by the IPCC at its next meeting in early 2020.
Governments agreed in Paris in 2015 to respond to climate change by limiting global warming to well below 2ºC above pre-industrial levels while pursuing efforts to hold it to 1.5ºC. Each government decides its own actions in furtherance of this goal, known as Nationally Determined Contributions: They agreed to review progress towards the goal in a global stocktake every five years starting in 2023.