Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established in 1988 by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), with a mission to provide a clear scientific view of the knowledge on climate change and its potential environmental and socio-economic impacts. It was created ten years after human interference with the climate system — the “greenhouse effect” — was first acknowledged as a global problem, at the 1979 First World Climate Conference [IRES, Ch. XI, para. 11.35, PDF pp. 154–155, 2018].

Assessment reports

IPCC periodically issues scientific assessments of climate change. The IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) was published in 2007. The IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), published in 2013, corroborated and reinforced AR4’s findings: it underlines that “warming of the climate system is unequivocal” and that “it is extremely likely that more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010 was caused by the anthropogenic increase in greenhouse gas concentrations and other anthropogenic forcings together.” These assessments are consistent with ongoing climate observations reported by WMO. AR5 further emphasizes that “continued emissions of GHGs will cause further warming and changes in all components of the climate system”, and that “limiting climate change will require substantial and sustained reductions of greenhouse gas emissions” [IRES, Ch. XI, para. 11.36, PDF p. 155, 2018]. According to IPCC’s AR5, around 70 per cent of global GHG emissions in 2010 related to energy supply and use, with CO2 from fuel combustion accounting for a major part [IRES, Ch. XI, para. 11.43, PDF p. 157, 2018].

Role as author of the GHG-inventory guidelines

An important function of IPCC is to provide methodological guidance on the estimation of national GHG emissions as part of the preparation of national GHG inventories. The first consolidated and extensive guidance was issued by IPCC in 1995, revised and published as the Revised 1996 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories (IPCC 1997). It was followed by the Good Practice Guidance and Uncertainty Management in National Greenhouse Gas Inventories (IPCC 2000) and the Good Practice Guidance for Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry (IPCC 2003) [IRES, Ch. XI, para. 11.38, PDF p. 155, 2018].

The 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories were prepared at the invitation of the UNFCCC. Per UNFCCC Conference of the Parties decision 24/CP.19 (Warsaw, Poland, 11–23 November 2013), Annex I Parties to UNFCCC are required to use the 2006 IPCC Guidelines in their national GHG inventory submissions from 2015; while there is no formal decision on use by non-Annex I Parties, some developing countries have started using the Guidelines, and more are expected to follow [IRES, Ch. XI, para. 11.39, PDF p. 155, 2018]. The IPCC Guidelines address emissions of direct GHGs (CO2, CH4, N2O, HFCs, PFCs, SF6 and others) and indirect GHGs (NOX, NH3, NMVOC, CO and SO2) [IRES, Ch. XI, para. 11.40, PDF p. 155, 2018]. The Guidelines’ estimation methods — the sectoral approach (Tiers 1–3) and the reference approach — are described in full in Greenhouse Gas Emissions (Box 11.1).

The IPCC Guidelines encourage the use of fuel statistics collected by official national bodies as the most appropriate and accessible data, recognizing that GHG-estimate quality depends critically on the quality of national energy statistics; where national data are unavailable or have gaps, IPCC suggests using data from international organizations such as UNSD and IEA [IRES, Ch. XI, paras 11.45–11.46, PDF p. 157, 2018].

confidence: medium — this page covers IPCC’s institutional history and its role as author of the GHG-inventory Guidelines lineage as presented in IRES Chapter XI; a fuller institutional profile (governance structure, working groups, membership) is not drawn from the source and may be expanded if a document treating IPCC directly enters the corpus.

Related

• Greenhouse Gas Emissions — the concept page reproducing Box 11.1’s Tier 1/2/3 sectoral approach and the reference approach in full, and the wider role of energy statistics as GHG data source
• United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change — the treaty framework that invited and mandates use of the 2006 IPCC Guidelines
• IRES Chapter XI — Uses of Basic Energy Statistics and Balances — the Chapter XI digest this page supports (Section D)