With a focus on cities, Climate Centre joins process for IPCC seventh assessment
By the Climate Centre
A week-long plenary meeting of the IPCC to finalize the road map for its seventh assessment of the global climate (AR7) ended in the Chinese city of Hangzhou today.
More than 400 delegates representing 195 IPCC member governments discussed timelines and budgets for the three working group reports: WGI on the physical science of climate; WGII on impacts, adaptation and vulnerability, and the one of central concern to the humanitarian sector; and WGIII dealing with mitigation.
Recalling that 2024 was the warmest year on record, with global temperatures reaching 1.55°C above pre-industrial levels, WMO Deputy Secretary-General Ko Barrett told the opening ceremony Monday: “The findings of our work are not just academic – they serve as a guiding compass for governments as they navigate the complexities of climate change.
“And if it isn’t true yet I would venture to say it will be soon that every one of us will know somebody who has been affected by an extreme event like severe flooding or extreme heat.”
The session also considered a planned report on technologies for removing carbon from the atmosphere and storing it safely.
China’s Special Envoy for Climate Change, Liu Zhenmin, and Chen Zhenlin, Administrator of the China Meteorological Administration, welcomed delegates and observer organizations to what was the 62nd IPCC plenary in Hangzhou.
‘If it isn’t true yet it will be soon that everyone will know somebody who has been affected by an extreme event like severe flooding or heat’
For AR7, the Climate Centre is represented by the new chair of its board, Debra Roberts, and its Director Programmes, Julie Arrighi, who will serve on the IPCC author team for a special report on cities that meets for the first time in Japan on 10 March.
Arrighi has supported urban risk reduction and adaptation projects in nearly 20 cities in nine countries, including field work in Kenya, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe.
AR6 authors included former Climate Centre Director Maarten van Aalst, its Manager, Climate Science, Erin Coughlan de Perez, and its Senior Pacific Climate Adviser, Olivia Warrick.
The AR7 Synthesis Report is due by late 2029 after completion of the three Working Group reports; the AR6 Synthesis Report was released in March 2023.
Global assessment reports from the IPCC are published every five to seven years. The seventh assessment cycle formally began in July 2023 with the elections of new IPCC task force bureaux at its plenary session in Nairobi.
Lokoja, the flooded capital of Nigeria’s Kogi state, in November 2022, one of the top ten fastest-growing cities in the world, with a growth rate of nearly 6 per cent. Floods in Nigeria at that point were described in the IFRC’s emergency appeal as “the worst in at least a decade, with a widespread impact in 29 of the country’s 36 states.” (Photo: IFRC)