Climate Change 2007, the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), has been completed and is due for release today. Copies of the Synthesis report will be available from www.ipcc.ch from later today AEST.
The Report contains the following
- observed changes in climate and its effects (WG 1, 2)
- Past climate change including palaeoclimate aspects
- Effects of past climate change on natural systems and society
- Causes of change (WG 1, 2, 3)
- Natural and human-related factors
- Feedbacks, via the carbon cycle and otherwise
- Climate change and its impacts in the near and long term under different scenarios (WG 1, 2, 3)
- Future climate change
- Vulnerabilities
- Hazards, risks and opportunities
- Water, agriculture, ecosystems, human well-being and development
- Regional implications
- Implications of timescales, inertia, and lags
- Risks of abrupt or irreversible changes
Adaptation and mitigation options and responses, and the inter-relationship with sustainable development, at global and regional levels (WG 2, 3)
- Adaptation - past experience and options and policies (including costs/benefits, co-benefits, and spillover effects), extent, limits, effectiveness and enhancement, sectoral and regional considerations, current, medium-, and long-term
- Mitigation - past experience and options and policies (including costs/benefits, co-benefits, and spillover effects), extent, limits, effectiveness and enhancement, sectoral and regional considerations,current, medium-, and long-term
- Relationship between adaptation and mitigation options
- Technology: timing, development, transfer, environment and integration issues
- International cooperation
The long term perspective: scientific and socio-economic aspects relevant to adaptation and mitigation, consistent with the objectives and provisions of the Convention, and in the context of sustainable developmen
- Costs, benefits and avoided damage and risks at global and regional levels and under different scenarios
- Timing of mitigation and equity implications
- Relationship between adaptation and mitigation
- Technology flows and development
- Broader environment and integration issues
Robust findings, key uncertainties
