The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was set up in 1988 by the United Nations to guide governments on global warming. It draws on work by about 2,500 specialists from more than 130 nations and last issued reports in 2001. This year it will issue four, the second of which was delivered yesterday.
Paris, February 2nd: First IPCC report of the year said it was "very likely", or at least 90 per cent certain, that mankind was to blame for most of the global warming in the last half-century. The 2001 report had put the probability at "likely", or at least 66 per cent. The new report projected a "best estimate" that temperatures would rise by 1.8 to 4 degrees this century.
Brussels, April 6th: The second report details the likely impacts on water availability, health, farming.
Bangkok, May 4th: The third report, Mitigation of Climate Change, will analyse ways to fight global warming, including options and costs for reining in emissions of greenhouse gases.
Valencia, November 16th: A fourth so-called synthesis report will sum up all the findings.
Previous IPCC reports (2001, 1995, 1990)
The 2001 study said there was "new and stronger evidence" linking human activities to rising temperatures. In 1995 the IPCC concluded that "the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate".
That report helped pave the way for the UN's Kyoto Protocol in 1997, which obliges 35 industrial nations to cut greenhouse gases to 5 per cent below 1990 levels by 2008-12.
The first IPCC report in 1990 outlined risks of warming and played a role in prompting governments to agree a 1992 UN climate convention that set a non-binding goal of stabilising greenhouse gases at 1990 levels by 2000. The target was not met. - (Reuters)