It has been a hellish year for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and its beleaguered chairman, economist Rajendra Pachauri.
In late 2009, as the world pored over e-mails taken from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit in Norwich, UK, the IPCC was rocked by revelations about mistakes in its most recent climate assessment report. A storm of criticism over Pachauri's handling of the affair followed, along with allegations of conflicts of interest that put him under intense pressure to quit.
At the end of the IPCC's plenary meeting last week in Busan, South Korea, however, Pachauri was still firmly in charge. No attempt was made to force him to step down, says Ottmar Edenhofer, chief economist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany and co-chair of the IPCC's working group on climate-change mitigation. But he is on notice, Edenhofer adds. "Governments made it very clear that they expect him to make changes," says Edenhofer — both to improve the IPCC's climate assessments and to foster greater public and political confidence in its work.
According to IPCC officials, negotiations last week were cumbersome and tainted by the looming issue of the future of the group's controversial chairman. "Delegates avoided talking about Pachauri's role," says Edenhofer. Insiders say that fear of provoking a confrontation between the IPCC's rich and poor member countries may have made the delegates reluctant to discuss the fate of Pachauri, who is from India.
Instead, delegates in Busan focused in part on how to implement recommendations for reform from the Amsterdam-based InterAcademy Council (IAC), a consortium of national science academies. In March, the United Nations — the IPCC's parent body — asked the IAC to carry out a review of the IPCC and propose organizational and procedural changes (see Nature 467, 14; 2010).
To restore some of the IPCC's lost credibility, and to make sure that its future assessments are more robust, the meeting eventually agreed on new guidelines, recommended by the IAC, on the use of non-peer-reviewed literature; on the characterization of scientific uncertainty; and on how to handle and correct errors. In future, IPCC authors will use consistent terminology to qualitatively describe uncertainties, and will cross-check more thoroughly the authenticity and robustness of data and information taken from 'grey literature' that has not been peer reviewed.
Most climate scientists say that errors in the assessment report — such as the notorious statement that all Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035 — do not undermine the scientific case that human activity is dangerously warming the planet. But such errors must be corrected quickly and transparently to preserve the IPCC's credibility, the IAC said, and climate scientists agree. "Making the treatment of uncertainty more consistent is very important, and that task is very well on its way," says Gabriele Hegerl, a climate modeller at the University of Edinburgh, UK.
The IAC also proposed more far-reaching changes to the IPCC's management structure to streamline its decision-making. But delegates postponed any action pending the outcome of further investigation by several newly established task groups. By January 2011, these groups will propose options for improving the IPCC's management structures, review procedures, communication strategies and conflict-of-interest policies. The IPCC will decide how to implement these at its next plenary session, to be held in May 2011 in Abu Dhabi.
Several scientists lamented the slow pace of reform. "I think the IPCC needs to go further to restore its credibility with the public, policy-makers and other scientists," says Judith Curry, a climate researcher at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. She adds that the organization needs to undergo "continued self-reflection on how to ensure the highest quality assessments and that the entire process is transparent and free from conflicts of interest".
Michael Zürn, an expert on transnational conflicts and international institutions at the Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB), thinks that the IPCC has more fundamental problems that the reforms will not address. The IPCC is more than a loose alliance of scientists tasked by the United Nations with assessing our knowledge of climate change — its work also has a political dimension, he says.
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But, Zürn adds, the 'soft' political authority that the international community has bestowed on the IPCC can all too easily clash with national interests, particularly because the IPCC's legitimacy is based on expertise rather than on a democratic mandate.
Pachauri, however, is optimistic about the future. The IPCC, he says, is well-prepared to march ahead towards producing a fifth assessment report by the end of 2014. "Despite all the noise we have not wasted a single minute to do what the world expects us to do," he told Nature. "I, for one, never lack the physical and mental energy that is required for the job."
IPCC need to restore its credibility by sincere efforts,change of guard(R K Pachauri) is not a solution.
Anurag chaurasia,ICAR,India,anurag@nbaim.org
anurag_vns1@yahoo.co.in,+919452196686(M)
The Statement in the article,†In late 2009, as the world pored over e-mails taken from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit in Norwich, UK, the IPCC was rocked by revelations about mistakes in its most recent climate assessment report. A storm of criticism over Pachauri's handling of the affair followed, along with allegations of conflicts of interest that put him under intense pressure to quit†leaves IPCC and its Chairman Dr.R.K.Pachauri in a centre of controversy.
In an interesting article on Glaciers: weaknesses in IPCC review to the fore R. Ramachandran wrote (The Hindu, New Delhi, September 20, 2010):
“The review by the Inter-Academy Council (IAC) of the working of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which was released on August 30, has brought out some interesting facts about the Himalayan glacier controversy.
Significantly, besides revealing the weaknesses in the multi-layered process established by the IPCC to review draft chapters of its reports and correct errors, the IAC report highlights the shortcomings in the internal process of review within the government when the reports are received by it for comments.
The observation on the Himalayan glaciers in the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) of the IPCC, issued in 2007, was one of the controversial statements in the report that led the Panel to request the IAC on March 10 to “conduct a thorough and independent review of the processes and procedures followed by the IPCC in preparing its Assessment Reports.â€
The controversial statement on the Himalayan glaciers appeared in Section 10.6.2 of the report of the Working Group II on Impacts, Vulnerability and Adaptation. Citing a 2005 report of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), a non-peer-reviewed (grey) literature, it said: “Glaciers in the Himalayas are receding faster than in any other part of the world…and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by… 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate. Its total area will likely shrink from the present 500,000 km2 to 100,000 km2 by … 2035.â€
The WWF report had, in turn, cited a 1999 report of the Working Group on Himalayan Glaciology (WGHG) of the International Commission for Snow and Ice (ICSI) whose chairman at that time was the well-known Indian glaciologist, Syed Iqbal Hasnain, formerly of the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and now with The Energy Research Institute (TERI), New Delhi. The ICSI report had also resulted in a New Scientist article in June 1999 that quoted Professor Hasnain as saying that the Himalayan glaciers would vanish within 40 years as a result of global warming.
‘No critical comments'
Investigating the error, the IAC committee examined the draft text of the chapter in question and the relevant reviewer comments. The committee's analysis showed that six experts reviewed this section in the first draft and, interestingly, none of their comments was critical. However, at the stage of the second draft, which is sent to both the governments and expert reviewers, two comments were related to the erroneous statement on Himalayan glaciers, but neither of them was from the Indian government or any Indian expert.
David Saltz of the Desert Research Institute, Ben Gunion University, Israel, had pointed to the contradiction in the text, which spoke of glaciers disappearing by 2035, and in the same breath said their total area would shrink by 2035. However, the authors or the review editors “missed†clarifying this and failed to change the text.
Another reviewer, Hayley Fowler of Newcastle University, questioned the conclusions of the section and referred to the work that arrived at different conclusions. Professor Fowler pointed out that measurements by Hewitt suggested that the western Himalayan glaciers were expanding and added that the changes in precipitation and temperature trends, which he along with D. R. Archer had observed, also supported that. After merely noting on the margins, “Was unable to get hold of the suggested references; will consider in the final version,†the writing team failed to act upon this comment and the final version of the chapter remained unchanged.
Professor Fowler and Mr. Archer had said in their 2006 paper: “The observed downward trend in summer temperature and runoff is consistent with the observed thickening and expansion of Karakoram glaciers, in contrast to widespread decay and retreat in the eastern Himalayas. This suggests that the Western Himalayas are showing a different response to global warming than other parts of the globe.â€
In contrast to the final version of the WG II report, the final version of the Summary for Policy Makers (SPM), however, does not have any statement on the Himalayan glaciers. This is because the (second) draft version of the report, which is sent to experts and the governments, elicited a response from the Indian government and, interestingly, none from any expert.
The remark included in the draft SPM from Section 10.6.2 was: “If the current warming rates are maintained, the Himalayan glaciers could decay at very rapid rates, shrinking from the present 500,000 km2 to 100,000 km2 by 2030s.â€
The Indian government had commented: “This is a very drastic conclusion. Should have a supporting reference otherwise should be deleted.†In response, the writing team removed the contentious statement from the SPM.
But what is interesting to note is the lacuna in the review processâ€
It is left to the conscience of Dr.R.K.Pachauri to take future course of action.
Dr.A.Jagadeesh Nellore (AP), India
IPCC should act as INTERNATIONAL CREDIBILITY COMMITTEE but not as INTERNATIONAL CONTROVERSIAL COMMITTEE.
Dr.A.Jagadeesh Nellore (AP), India
An Indian train engineer, head of a fraudulent AGW study group..... Perfect. You people are a joke. Your 'science' is a JOKE!
There is lot of criticism n IPCC and its functioning. Here is an excellent analysis on the subject:
Has the IPCC rendered itself irrelevant?( CLIMATE PROGRESS,An insider.s view of climate science,politics,and solutions, April 15, 2009
If you go to the homepage of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, you will find at the top one of the most amazing statements ever issued by that body:
The IPCC is currently starting to outline its Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) which will be finalized in 2014.
2014? How useless is that?
While glacial change may no longer be an apt term for what is actually happening to the world’s glaciers, it is an ironically apt term for what has happened to the IPCC.
Originally the assessments of the state of understanding of the science were going to be every 5 years, then that slid to every 6 years, and now we are apparently at 7 years between reports.
The Fourth Assessment should have been sufficient to jumpstart serious action (see “Absolute MUST Read IPCC Report: Debate over, further delay fatal, action not costly“). But it ended up be out of date the minute the ink was dry for several reasons:
• The IPCC stops taking scientific input a year or two before the year the report comes out and the science is moving fast
• Most of the climate models had not yet incorporated many if any of the amplifying carbon cycle feedbacks, like the saturation of the sinks or the melting of the permafrost (see here).
• It published too soon to capture the China-driven explosion in emissions, so its emissions scenarios were DOA (see U.S. media largely ignores latest warning from climate scientists: “Recent observations confirm … the worst-case IPCC scenario trajectories (or even worse) are being realised†— 1000 ppm)
• The consensus-based process in which every member government signs off on every word in the synthesis reports leads to a least-common-denominator set of statements that further waters down the science.
Indeed, the Fourth Assessment was out-of-date so quickly that the Bush Administration itself (!) issued a climate science report the very next year (which I’m told was held up for months by Bushies who didn’t want it to come out before the election) — signed off on by Bush’s science advisor, Commerce Secretary and Energy Secretary that pointed out in detail how much of on underestimate it was (see US Geological Survey stunner: Sea-level rise in 2100 will likely “substantially exceed†IPCC projections, SW faces “permanent drying†by 2050).
The net result is that deniers and delayers like American Thinker and Lomborg actually (mis)quote the IPCC report on behalf of their do-nothing recommendations and that we already know things are almost certainly going to be much, much worse on our current emissions path than the IPCC said (see “Yes, the science says on our current emissions path we are projected to warm most of U.S. 10 – 15°F by 2100, with sea level rise of 5 feet or more, and the SW will be a permanent Dust Bowl“).
We need a major new report by 2012 at the latest — and frankly one sooner than would be most useful. Since the IPCC has apparently taken itself out of the game, I’d strongly recommend that the Obama administration adopt a four-fold strategy.
First, science adviser John Holdren should initiate a detailed series of reports on U.S. impacts — temperature rise, sea level rise, Dust-Bowl-ification, spread of disease, ocean acidification, and so on — ending with a full assessment on the total cost of inaction (see “An introduction to global warming impacts“). Second, Energy Secretary Steven Chu should initiate a detailed series of reports on mitigation technologies and costs — efficiency, cogeneration, solar PV, concentrated solar thermal, and so on (see “An introduction to the core climate solutions“). Third, the Administration can then issue a Stern-like report on the costs of action versus the costs of inaction.
Fourth, the Administration should task the National Academy of Sciences with doing its own U.S. version of the IPCC Fifth Assessment — cochaired by NASA’s James Hansen and Carnegie Institution’s Christopher Field, to be published in 2010 or 2011 at the latest.
We simply don’t have the luxury of waiting another 5 years for the next major assessment of climate science, impacts, and mitigation.
Dr.A.Jagadeesh Nellore(AP),India