IPCC aims for clarity and relevance in new report
Baku, October 16 (AZERTAC). Providing information that policymakers can use is key to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as work begins on its next global assessment, according to BBC.
The report, known as AR5, will focus on factors that materially affect people`s lives, such as the Asian monsoon.
It will also look at what aspects of climate change might be irreversible.
Leaders of the IPCC`s scientific assessment were speaking to BBC News during a conference in South Korea aimed at modernising the organisation.
They indicated that procedures used in compiling AR5 will reflect some criticisms made in the wake of errors uncovered in its previous assessment, in 2007.
The recent review of the IPCC`s procedures, conducted by the InterAcademy Council (IAC), an umbrella body for the world`s science academies, said that some assertions about the likelihood of severe impacts were based on little research.
"Authors reported high confidence in statements for which there is little evidence, such as the widely-quoted statement that agricultural yields in Africa might decline by up to 50 percent by 2020," it noted.
The IAC recommended that the next assessment must deal much more carefully and consistently with uncertainties - and Chris Field, co-chair of the IPCC working group on impacts, adaptation and vulnerability, indicated the message had been taken on board.
"The fact of the matter is that climate change impacts are very poorly known," he told BBC News.
"We only have mature scientific studies for a small number of topics and a small number of places, so we need to recognise that and figure out how, in an environment where the information is limited, we can still provide valuable information.
"What I expect us to do is to use the uncertainty guidance very carefully so we can avoid problems where we seem to be asserting more confidence than the data will allow; but also provide value to a discussion where the confidence isn`t necessarily very high.
"After all, most people spend their lives making decisions under uncertainty, and that`s what dealing effectively with climate change demands - the same kind of decisions you make when you decide to buckle your seatbelt, or buy insurance for your house or invest in the financial markets."
Natural changes
Increasingly, computer models of climate change are projecting impacts on a region-by-region basis, rather than globally.
This is widely acknowledged as vital for policymaking. But previous IPCC reports have not necessarily produced regional assessments in the most user-friendly or relevant way, suggested Thomas Stocker from the University of Bern in Switzerland, co-chair of the climate science working group for AR5.
"We will start from the processes that are necessary to characterise regional climate change, such as the El Nino Southern Oscillation, the North Atlantic Oscillation, monsoon systems around the world," he said.
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