New IPCC climate change report soon to be one step closer for adoption
February 1, 2019The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has opened the final draft of its new methodology report.
The “2019 Refinement”, the latest IPCC climate change methodology report, has now been submitted for government review, bringing it one step closer to consideration for adoption by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in May.
The methodology report is an update to the guidelines used by countries for greenhouse gas inventories.
Officially, the updated IPCC climate change report’s full name is “2019 Refinement to the 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories.” In other words, the report is a refinement of the guidelines that the organization previously published for national greenhouse gas inventories back in 2006.
More specifically, according to a recent IPCC press release, it is an “update to the guidelines or methodologies that countries use to estimate their anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases.”
Essentially, the purpose of the update to the 2006 guidelines is to support the preparation and continual improvements of national greenhouse inventories.
The new IPCC climate change report has been designed to help countries who are part of the 2015 Paris Agreement.
While the “2019 Refinement” aims to achieve a number of goals, one of its primary objectives is to assist countries in enhancing their national inventory reports of emissions and removals under the 2015 Paris Agreement, if they should agree to use it.
The Paris Agreement seeks to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change. Among its objectives is to keep the increase in the global average temperature to well under 2℃ (35.6℉) above pre-industrial levels as well as work toward efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5℃ (34.7℉) above pre-industrial levels. IPCC, an organization established in 1988, contributes to understanding climate change and has been fundamental to creating global agreements on common goals, such as the Paris Agreement.
The review of the “2019 Refinement” will run for eight weeks from 28 January to 24 March, 2019. IPCC climate change reports are always subject to multiple stages of review to make sure that the latest science presented has undergone an objective and comprehensive assessment.
“We hope as many governments as possible will take part in this review to strengthen the accuracy and completeness of the draft’s scientific information and overall balance,” said Eduardo Calvo Buendia, one of the two co-chairs of the Task Force on National Greenhouse Gas Inventories (TFI), in a press statement.
The latest “2019 Refinement” IPCC climate change report has been prepared by the TIF.