The IPCC is currently in its Sixth Assessment cycle, during which the IPCC will produce the Assessment reports of its three working groups, three special reports, a refinement to the methodology report and the Synthesis report. The Synthesis Report will be the last of the AR6 products, due for release in 2022.
According to IPCC procedures the Synthesis Reports (SYRs) should “synthesise and integrate materials contained within the Assessment Reports and Special Reports” and “should be written in a non-technical style suitable for policymakers and address a broad range of policy-relevant but policy-neutral questions approved by the Panel”. They are composed of two sections, a Summary for Policymakers (SPM) of 5 to 10 pages and a longer report of 30 to 50 pages.
The writing of AR6 SYR will be based on the content of the three Working Groups Assessment Reports: WG1 – The Physical Science Basis, WG2 – Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, WG3 – Mitigation of Climate change, and the three Special Reports: Global Warming of 1.5°C, Climate Change and Land, The Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate.
It might also take into account issues considered in other global assessment (such as Intergovernmental Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services and UN Environment’s Sixth Global Environment Outlook), if those issues are also addressed in the above-mentioned reports.
AR6 SYR will be finalized in 2022. Read more
The first Core Writing Team (CWT) meeting was held at the end of January 2021.
Background
The Panel at its 41st Session held in Nairobi, Kenya from 24 to 27 February 2015 agreed that it would continue to prepare comprehensive assessment reports every five to seven years and that the scoping of the Synthesis Report – SYR – as well as attention to cross-cutting issues should start at an early stage (IPCC-XLI/4).
Consistent with decision IPCC/XLI-4, a preliminary Scoping meeting for the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) Synthesis Report (SYR) was held during the AR6 Scoping Meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on 1-5 May 2017. The Panel at its 46th Session held on 6-10 September 2017 in Montreal, Canada, took note of document IPCC-XLVI/Doc.6 which was produced during the scoping meeting.
A dedicated Scoping meeting for the AR6 Synthesis Report was held in Singapore from 21 to 23 October 2019, the outcome of which is included in the AR6 SYR Scoping document IPCC-LII/Doc.10 submitted to the 52nd session of the Panel. It is explained in more detail in the information document IPCC-LII/INF.12.
The Panel at its 52nd Session held in Paris, France from 24 to 28 February 2020 agreed to the outline of the AR6 SYR as is contained in Annex 1 to Decision IPCC-LII-10.
The Core Writing Team (CWT) is the group of authors preparing the Synthesis Report. The list of 30 Core Writing Team members and 9 Review Editors can be found here.
The IPCC Bureau at its 58th Session selected the members of Core Writing Team from the author teams of the three Working Group contributions to the AR6 and the three Special Reports, reflecting the balance in geographical distribution, gender, and representative of a range of expertise.
The CWT also includes the Chair, the IPCC Vice-Chairs, the Working Group Co-Chairs, the heads of the Working Group and Synthesis Report Technical Support Units, and the Secretary of the IPCC.
“The biggest simultaneous challenge and opportunity for the Sixth Assessment Report Synthesis Report is the massive increase in public awareness of climate change since the Fifth Assessment Report, and the readiness of governments and other actors to address the challenge,” said IPCC Chair Hoesung Lee, who leads the preparation of the Synthesis report.
“My main request to you as a member of the Core Writing Team will be to strive to go beyond listing the key findings of the Special Reports and Working Group contributions to AR6, to develop a Synthesis Report document that is a real integration of the AR6 cycle materials,” he said in a letter of welcome to the Core Writing Team members.
Core Writing Team meetings
The SYR outline agreed at the 52nd Panel Session of the IPCC consists of an introduction and three main sections arranged by timeframes.
The first section, ‘Current Status and Trends’, covers the historical and present period. The second section, ‘Long term Climate and Development Futures’, addresses projected futures up to 2100 and beyond. The final section is ‘Near term Responses in a Changing Climate’, considers current international policy timeframes, and the time interval between now and 2030-2040.
This structure, substantially different to what was adopted for AR5 SYR, enables a holistic framing that integrates across the Working Groups, better enabling the SYR to cover different aspects of climate change, including timescales of climate variability and climate system feedbacks in response to past, present and future anthropogenic forcings. As per the IPCC-52 Decision, the bulleted outline of the SYR should be considered by the SYR authors as indicative.
Scoping of the AR6 Synthesis Report
A scoping meeting was held in Singapore from 21 to 23 October 2019 at the Resorts World Conventions Centre.
A Scientific Steering Committee for the AR6 SYR scoping meeting was constituted during the 56th meeting of the Bureau in Geneva in March 2019. It is composed of the IPCC Chair and Vice-Chairs, the Co-Chairs of the Working Groups and of the Task Force on National Greenhouse Gas Inventories and two Vice-Chairs per Working Group.
An invitation to take part in a scoping meeting survey was sent early June to governments, observer organizations, IPCC Bureau members as well as to AR6 Coordinating Lead Authors and Lead Authors and the Core Writing Team of the AR5 Synthesis Report , with a deadline for responses set for 8 July 2019.
Fifteen responses from governments were received, three from observer organizations and a hundred and thirty from authors and Bureau members. The answers should guided the scoping meeting participants on the development of an outline for the SYR.
A call for nominations of experts to participate in this meeting was sent to governments, observer organizations and IPCC Bureau members on 1 May 2019, with a deadline was of 2 June 2019. A total of 546 nominations were received and 80 experts from 38 countries were selected.
The scoping meeting was held in Singapore in October 2019 (Timeline for the Singapore scoping meeting )
After the scoping meeting the Core Writing Team of the synthesis report was constituted and held their first meeting .
Scoping of the Working Group contributions to the Sixth Assessment Report
A scoping meeting took place in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) from 1 to 5 May 2017 where a first draft of the outlines of the WGs reports and five broad elements that will guide the writing of the SYR were developed.
A pre-scoping survey was sent in September 2016 by the Secretariat to governments and observer organizations, the responses were synthesized allowing the scoping meeting participants to identify the policy relevant questions and the scientific and technical topics to be addressed in the SYR (see the Chair’s Vision Paper).
In Montreal, during the Forty-sixth Session of the IPCC from 6 to 10 September 2017, the draft outlines were approved and the five broad elements were presented as follows:
Approved outlines
Authors and Review editors