Climate change assessments Review of the processes and ...

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participants, including the IPCC Chair, should be clearly defined. A limit of one term for key IPCC leaders, including the IPCC Chair, Working Group Co-chairs, and the proposed Executive Director, would ensure the infusion of fresh perspectives on the assessments. Recommendations: • The IPCC should establish an Executive Committee to act on its behalf between Plenary sessions. The membership of the Committee should include the IPCC Chair, the Working Group Co-chairs, the senior member of the Secretariat, and three independent members who include individuals from outside of the climate community. Members would be elected by the Plenary and serve until their successors are in place. • The IPCC should elect an Executive Director to lead the Secretariat and handle day-to-day operations of the organization. The term of this senior scientist should be limited to the time frame of one assessment. • The IPCC should redefine the responsibilities of key Secretariat positions both to improve efficiency and to allow for any future senior appointments. • The IPCC should develop and adopt a rigorous conflict-of-interest policy that applies to all individuals directly involved in the preparation of IPCC reports, including senior IPCC leadership (IPCC Chair and Vice Chairs), authors with responsibilities for report content (i.e., Working Group Co-chairs, Coordinating Lead Authors, and Lead Authors), Review Editors, and technical staff directly involved in report preparation (e.g., staff of Technical Support Units and the IPCC Secretariat). • The term of the IPCC Chair should be limited to the time frame of one assessment. • The terms of the Working Group Co-chairs should be limited to the time frame of one assessment. Strengthening the review process. The review process is a fundamental step for ensuring the quality of assessment reports. The Committee found that some existing IPCC review procedures are not always followed and that others are weak. In particular, Review Editors do not fully use their authority to ensure that review comments receive appropriate consideration by Lead Authors and that controversial issues are reflected adequately in the report. Staff support and/or clarification of the roles and responsibilities of Review 60 Climate change assessments | Review of the processes and procedures of the IPCC
Editors could help them provide the proper oversight. In addition, the large number of review comments may distract Lead Authors from fully addressing the most important issues. Having Review Editors identify the key issues that must be addressed would ensure that these issues receive due consideration. Allowing Lead Authors to document only their responses to noneditorial comments would reduce their administrative burden. Recommendations: • The IPCC should encourage Review Editors to fully exercise their authority to ensure that reviewers’ comments are adequately considered by the authors and that genuine controversies are adequately reflected in the report. • The IPCC should adopt a more targeted and effective process for responding to reviewer comments. In such a process, Review Editors would prepare a written summary of the most significant issues raised by reviewers shortly after review comments have been received. Authors would be required to provide detailed written responses to the most significant review issues identified by the Review Editors, abbreviated responses to all noneditorial comments, and no written responses to editorial comments. Characterizing and communicating uncertainties. IPCC’s guidance for addressing uncertainties in the Fourth Assessment Report urges authors to consider the amount of evidence and level of agreement about all conclusions and to apply subjective probabilities of confidence to conclusions when there was ‘high agreement, much evidence.’ However, such guidance was not always followed, as exemplified by the many statements in the Working Group II Summary for Policymakers that are assigned high confidence but are based on little evidence. Moreover, the apparent need to include statements of ‘high confidence’ (i.e., an 8 out of 10 chance of being correct) in the Summary for Policymakers led authors to make many vaguely defined statements that are difficult to refute, therefore making them of ‘high confidence.’ Such statements have little value. Scientific uncertainty is best communicated by indicating the nature, amount, and quality of studies on a particular topic, as well as the level of agreement among studies. The IPCC level-of-understanding scale provides a useful means of communicating this information. Climate change assessments | Review of the processes and procedures of the IPCC 61
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October 2010 Climate change assessm
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Climate change assessments
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Foreword In March 2010, the InterAc
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Contents Foreword iii Committee to
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Preface Since its founding more tha
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IAC report review This report was e
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Acknowledgements Community input wa
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management structure comprises the
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amount of evidence available and th
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1. Introduction The Intergovernment
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assessment, they must carry out the
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Number of authors 1500 1200 900 600
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BOX 1.2 Roles of participants in IP
Page 27 and 28: The IPCC assessment process in brie
Page 29 and 30: Preparation of the Synthesis Report
Page 31 and 32: 2. Evaluation of IPCC’s assessmen
Page 33 and 34: authors are chosen and others are n
Page 35 and 36: efore incorporating them (Appendix
Page 37 and 38: ange of viewpoints offered and pote
Page 39 and 40: for rejected comments. In the case
Page 41 and 42: Summary for Policymakers A Summary
Page 43 and 44: in each of the three Working Group
Page 45 and 46: 3. IPCC’s evaluation of evidence
Page 47 and 48: Table 3.3 Likelihood scale used by
Page 49 and 50: models, conditional on the SRES sce
Page 51 and 52: 4. The likelihood scale used by Wor
Page 53 and 54: change. The area suitable for agric
Page 55 and 56: Fourth Assessment Report by present
Page 57 and 58: not consistently followed in the fo
Page 59 and 60: Recommendation ►The likelihood sc
Page 61 and 62: 4. Governance and management The IP
Page 63 and 64: The IPCC makes all of its major dec
Page 65 and 66: The IPCC Bureau The IPCC Bureau com
Page 67 and 68: Ismail A.R. El Gizouli (Sudan - Act
Page 69 and 70: ex officio member of the Executive
Page 71 and 72: were interviewed by the Committee o
Page 73 and 74: Working Groups and Technical Suppor
Page 75 and 76: Recommendation ►The IPCC should c
Page 77: 5. Conclusions IPCC’S processes a
Page 81 and 82: Increasing transparency. Transparen
Page 83 and 84: making the assessment reports short
Page 85 and 86: esponded to the Committee’s quest
Page 87 and 88: dents have suggested testing the co
Page 89 and 90: References Agrawala, S., 1998a, Con
Page 91 and 92: Kahan, D., 2010, Fixing the communi
Page 93 and 94: Appendix A Letters of request to th
Page 95 and 96: Climate change assessments | Review
Page 97 and 98: Climate change assessments | Review
Page 99 and 100: Appendix B Questionnaire on IPCC pr
Page 101 and 102: F. Crooks, CSIR/SABS, South Africa
Page 103 and 104: Girma Orssengo, University of Weste
Page 105 and 106: Appendix D Excerpts of IPCC procedu
Page 107 and 108: IPCC review process (IPCC, 1999, Se
Page 109 and 110: 4.2.4.2 Second review (by governmen
Page 111 and 112: Plan to treat issues of uncertainty
Page 113 and 114: C. An order of magnitude can be giv
Page 115 and 116: 14. Likelihood, as defined in Table
Page 117 and 118: Appendix E Committee biographies Ha
Page 119 and 120: to 2001, he worked at the Frontier
Page 121 and 122: Appendix F Acronyms and abbreviatio
Page 123: IAC Secretariat Het Trippenhuis Klo
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