Fresh leadership is urged for UN’s climate assessment panel

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change , the United Nations–chartered scientific entity that periodically assesses the state of climate change, should appoint a full-time executive director and should restrict the terms of that individual, and that of the IPCC chairman, to the six years it takes to prepare each assessment, according to an independent evaluation of the IPCC’s processes and procedures.

The report also urged the IPCC to more diligently consider and incorporate the comments of reviewers, and to reformulate the methodology that it uses to describe the uncertainty of its forecasts.

The review committee, formed under auspices of the InterAcademy Council , an umbrella organization comprising the national science academies of 15 nations, further called for the disclosure of potential conflicts of interest held by the scientists who work on a voluntary basis to produce the IPCC assessments.

Other UN agencies, including the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Program, do disclose their potential conflicts, noted retired Princeton University president and economist Harold Shapiro , who chaired the committee.

Shapiro told reporters that his panel did not evaluate the performance of individuals in the IPCC organization. But its report does urge that the IPCC chairman, together with the editors for each of the assessments’ six chapters and the executive director that it calls for, should all be replaced on completion of an assessment cycle.

Asked by reporters if he would resign, Rajendra Pachauri , who has served as IPCC chairman since 2002, was noncommittal, saying that he will wait to see whether the recommendations are accepted by the IPCC’s 194 member nations when they meet to discuss the report in October. But Pachauri noted that he was elected to head the current, fifth assessment, which is due for completion in 2013.

The report called for the creation of an executive committee, to include the IPCC chair, working group cochairs, senior staff, and three independent members, including some from outside of the climate community. The committee would handle the day-to-day operations of the IPCC.

Noting how the most recent IPCC assessment issued in 2007 had drawn 90 000 review comments, and had stretched the ability of lead authors “to respond thoughtfully and fully,” the report urged a more targeted and effective process in which editors would prepare a written summary of the most significant issues raised by reviewers shortly after review comments have been received.

Reforming the review process

The committee recommended adopting a system used by the US National Research Council by which authors are required to provide written responses in only two cases: 1. to the list of the most significant review issues; 2) to any other substantive reviewer comments with which they disagreed and did not implement.

A variety of methods for gauging the uncertainty of climate change forecasts were employed by the three working groups in preparing the fourth assessment’s summary for policymakers. The Shapiro committee urged that all groups use a qualitative level-of-understanding scale, possibly supplemented by a quantitative probability scale where appropriate.

The committee also faulted the IPCC’s “slow and inadequate responses” to reports of errors in the 2007 assessment report. It recommended that a communications strategy be formulated “that emphasizes transparency, rapid and thoughtful responses, relevance to stakeholders, and which includes guidelines about who can speak on behalf of IPCC and how to represent the organization appropriately.”

The IPCC has apologized for one error included in the 2007 assessment—its forecast that Himalayan glaciers are very likely to disappear by 2035 or sooner. That forecast was followed by the assertion that those same glaciers will shrink from 500 000 square kilometers to 100 000 square kilometers over the same time scale. The Shapiro committee noted that the authors and editors of the chapter had failed to carefully consider the comments of two expert reviewers who had questioned those statements.

To combat “confirmation bias"—the tendency for authors to place too much emphasis on their own views relative to others—the committee urged that explicit documentation be provided showing that a range of scientific viewpoints had been considered, and that senior IPCC editors satisfy themselves that due consideration was given to alternative views.

David Kramer