IPCC circulates final draft of Synthesis Report to Sixth Assessment Report

GENEVA, Nov 25 – The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has circulated the final draft of the Summary for Policymakers and a longer report of the Synthesis Report of the Sixth Assessment Report to governments for review and comments. The Final Government Distribution, running from 21 November 2022 to 15 January 2023 is the last phase of preparations before the Panel’s plenary approval of this final installment of the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report, scheduled for March 2023.

The Synthesis Report integrates the findings of the three Working Group contributions released respectively in August 2021, and then in February and April 2022, and the three Special Reports released in 2018 and 2019. It will provide policymakers with a high-level, up-to-date understanding of climate change, its impacts and future risks, and options for addressing it. The Synthesis Report will feed into the next year’s Global Stocktake – a fundamental component of the Paris Agreement monitoring its implementation and evaluating collective progress towards the agreed goals.

“With climate change fast bearing down on humanity, the Synthesis Report will underscore the urgency of taking more ambitious action,” said IPCC Chair Hoesung Lee.

“It will also provide world governments with a robust list of options to improve ways to adapt to and prevent climate change. It will be up to each government to determine which options to pursue, but the Synthesis Report will make it very clear that inaction is no longer an option.”

Governments are scheduled to meet and consider the Synthesis Report of the Sixth Assessment Report during their next plenary from 13 to 17 March 2023 in Interlaken, Switzerland. During that meeting, the Panel consisting of 195 IPCC member governments will conduct a line by line approval of the Summary for Policymakers and adopt the longer report section by section.

For more information please contact:

IPCC Synthesis Report Technical Support Unit, 
Lance Ignon, ignon@ipcc-syr.org

IPCC Press Office, Email: ipcc-media@wmo.int
Andrej Mahecic, +41 22 730 8516 or Werani Zabula, +41 22 730 8120

Notes for Editors

About the IPCC

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the UN body for assessing the science related to climate change. It was established by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in 1988 to provide political leaders with periodic scientific assessments concerning climate change, its implications and risks, as well as to put forward adaptation and mitigation strategies. In the same year the UN General Assembly endorsed the action by the WMO and UNEP in jointly establishing the IPCC. It has 195 member states.

Thousands of people from all over the world contribute to the work of the IPCC. For the assessment reports, experts volunteer their time as IPCC authors to assess the thousands of scientific papers published each year to provide a comprehensive summary of what is known about the drivers of climate change, its impacts and future risks, and how adaptation and mitigation can reduce those risks.

The IPCC has three working groups: Working Group I, dealing with the physical science basis of climate change; Working Group II, dealing with impacts, adaptation and vulnerability; and Working Group III, dealing with the mitigation of climate change. It also has a Task Force on National Greenhouse Gas Inventories that develops methodologies for measuring emissions and removals.

IPCC assessments provide governments, at all levels, with scientific information that they can use to develop climate policies. IPCC assessments are a key input into the international negotiations to tackle climate change. IPCC reports are drafted and reviewed in several stages, thus guaranteeing objectivity and transparency.

About the Sixth Assessment Cycle

Comprehensive scientific assessment reports are published every 6 to 7 years; the latest, the Fifth Assessment Report, was completed in 2014 and provided the main scientific input to the Paris Agreement. 

At its 41st Session in February 2015, the IPCC decided to produce a Sixth Assessment Report (AR6). At its 42nd Session in October 2015 it elected a new Bureau that would oversee the work on this report and Special Reports to be produced in the assessment cycle. At its 43rd Session in April 2016, it decided to produce three Special Reports, a Methodology Report and AR6. 

The Working Group I contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report Climate Change 2021: the Physical Science Basis was released on 9 August 2021. The Working Group II contribution, Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, was released on 28 February 2022. The Working Group III contribution, Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change, was released on 4 April 2022.

The IPCC is currently working on the final installment of the Sixth Assessment Report, the Synthesis Report, which will integrate the findings of the three Working Group assessments as well as the three Special Reports released in 2018 and 2019. It is scheduled to be released in March 2023.

Global Warming of 1.5°C, an IPCC special report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty was launched in October 2018.

Climate Change and Land, an IPCC special report on climate change, desertification, land degradation, sustainable land management, food security, and greenhouse gas fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems was launched in August 2019, and the Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate was released in September 2019.

In May 2019 the IPCC released the 2019 Refinement to the 2006 IPCC Guidelines on National Greenhouse Gas Inventories, an update to the methodology used by governments to estimate their greenhouse gas emissions and removals. 

For more information visit www.ipcc.ch.

The website includes outreach materials including videos about the IPCC and video recordings from outreach events conducted as webinars or live-streamed events.

Most videos published by the IPCC can be found on our YouTube channel.