AR7 Climate Change: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability

The Panel agreed the outlines for the Working Group contributions AR7 and the revision of the 1994 IPCC Technical Guidelines during its 62nd Plenary Session held in Hangzhou, China, in February 2025.  

The full outline of the Working Group II AR7 is here. 

The outline of the update to the1994 IPCC Technical Guidelines on impacts and adaptation as well as adaptation indicators, metrics and guidelines is here.

The IPCC Bureau finalised the during their 69^th Session in July 2025. Author teams comprise of Coordinating Lead Authors, Lead Authors and Review Editors.

The full list of the authors and review editors of the Working Group II AR7 is

• First Joint Lead Author Meeting, 1-5 December 2025, Paris, France.
• Second Lead Author Meeting (TBC)
• Third Lead Author Meeting: (TBC)
• Fourth Lead Author Meeting: (TBC)

More details on how IPCC selects its authors are here.

A Scoping Meeting to prepare the draft outline of the Working Group contributions to the AR7 was held from 9 to 13 December 2024 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

A letter soliciting nominations of experts to attend the meeting was sent to governments and observer organizations on 3 May 2024. The list of those who attended the meeting is .

As stated in Appendix A of the Principles of Governing IPCC Work, the respective Bureaus of each Working Group selected the scoping meeting participants based on:

• Scientific, technical and socio-economic expertise, including the range of views; Geographical representation;
• A mixture of experts with and without previous experience in IPCC;
• Gender balance;
• Experts with a background from relevant stakeholder and user groups, including governments.

The Scoping Meeting participants collectively had expertise in the following areas:

Working Group I

• Observation, monitoring of climate variables, reanalyses (ocean, atmosphere, cryosphere, land, freshwater, coasts), process understanding (water cycle, short-lived climate forcers and air quality, other climate system processes).
• Climate modelling (global, Earth System Models, regional, coupled, ocean, atmosphere, cryosphere, land, hydrology, chemistry and biogeochemistry) and model evaluation.
• Statistical climatology (trends, extremes, attribution, downscaling and bias correction, observation constraints, AI, …), recent global and regional trends.
• Near-term and long-term ensemble projections, storylines, emulators, uncertainties, carbon budget.
• Climate services and decision-support tools (experience working with stakeholders).
• High-impact climate outcomes and abrupt changes including tipping points, compounding and cascading events.
• Physical aspects of renewable resources (Energy, Water, …).

Working Group II

• Impacts, losses and damages on, and vulnerability and risk for natural (g. land, freshwater, biodiversity and oceans), human (e.g. human safety, mobility and migration, health, economic sectors, poverty, livelihoods, and cultural heritage), and managed human-natural systems with implications for climate resilient development.
• Evaluating climate change adaptation: Methods for monitoring, setting indicators, metrics and targets, measuring observed and projected policy effectiveness at multiple temporal and spatial scales.
• Scenarios and assessments of integrated adaptation, mitigation and development policies at multiple governance levels (local to multi-national) accounting for gender, equity, justice and/or Indigenous Knowledge, and local knowledges.
• Aggregation of information on impacts, vulnerability, adaptation and risks to settlements (rural, urban, cities, small islands), and infrastructure and systems (g. sanitation and hygiene, water, food, nutrition, economic and energy security, industry, health and well-being, mobility).
• Adaptation needs, options, opportunities, constraints, limits, enabling conditions, policy impacts and influencing factors including contributions from governance, finance, law, psychology and sociology.
• Global dimension of adaptation responses: financial incentivization, responding to losses and damages, equity, justice, finance and governance, etc.
• Socio-cultural, psychological, political and legal drivers of making and implementing decisions.

Working Group III

•  Mitigation responses in energy, industry, transport, buildings, agriculture, forestry, land use and waste; Energy systems planning (including energy storage, demand side management, energy supply technologies, etc.).
• Cross-sectoral mitigation options covering land, coastal and ocean systems, including sector coupling, Carbon Dioxide Removal, Carbon Capture and Storage, Carbon Capture and Utilization, etc.
• Emission trends (consumption patterns, human behaviour and emissions trends, including economic, sociological and cultural aspects).
• Scenarios and transitions at the global, national, regional and local scales.
• Governance (policies, institutions, agreements and instruments) at the international, national and subnational levels, including just transitions of sectors and systems.
• Mitigation and sustainable development (capacity building; technology innovation, transfer and adoption; related enabling conditions; international cooperation).
• Economic and financial aspects of mitigation options.

Cross-cutting areas of expertise

• Integration of different forms of climate-related knowledge and data, including Indigenous Knowledge, local knowledge, and practice-based knowledge.
• Regional (including terrestrial, ocean, and coastal) and sectoral climate information.
• Carbon Dioxide Removal, Solar Radiation Modification and associated Earth System impacts/feedbacks.
• Scenarios and pathways, including physical climate, impacts and adaptation, mitigation, development, feasibility and socio-cultural considerations (equity, ethics, finance).
• Co-benefits, avoided impacts, risks and co-costs of mitigation and adaptation, including: interactions and trade-offs, technological and financial challenges, options and implementation and low regret options.
• Ethics and equity dimensions of climate change, sustainable development, gender, poverty eradication, livelihoods, health, and food security.
• Societal responses to spatial and temporal dimensions of risks and benefits of climate change, including sociological, financial, cultural and communication aspects.

Regional Expertise

• Africa
• Europe
• Asia
• Australasia
• North America
• Central and South America
• Polar regions
• Small Islands
• Oceania