Three SNRE researchers have been selected to contribute climate-change adaptation research and analysis to the fifth climate assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The comprehensive assessments examine climate change in terms of physical science, adaptation, and mitigation of impacts, and provide governments with sound scientific knowledge of climate change.
Dean Rosina M. Bierbaum will serve as a review editor for a chapter on global climate adaptation decision-making. Professor and Associate Dean for Research Arun Agrawal has been appointed a lead author of a chapter on climate effects on livelihoods and poverty, and Associate Professor Maria Carmen Lemos will be a lead author on a climate-change resilience and sustainable development chapter.
From about 3,000 nominations, 831 scientists from fields including meteorology, physics, oceanography, statistics, engineering, ecology, social sciences and economics were selected as authors and reviewers. The experts are divided into three working groups: physical science; impacts, adaptation strategies and vulnerability; and mitigation response strategies. Each group will produce a report, and the three reports, along with a summary, will be published as the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) by 2014.
The IPCC was established by the United Nations Environmental Programme and the World Meteorological Organization in 1989. The IPCC's fourth assessment report was published in 2007 and was nearly 3,000 pages long; the IPCC was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize that same year.