IPCC Fifth Assessment Report

The Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the fifth in a series of such reports. The IPCC was established in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to assess scientific, technical and socio-economic information concerning climate change, its potential effects and options for adaptation and mitigation.

The Fifth Assessment Report was finalized in 2014. As had been the case in the past, the outline of the AR5 was developed through a scoping process which involved climate change experts from all relevant disciplines and users of IPCC reports; in particular representatives from governments. Governments and organizations involved in the Fourth Report were asked to submit comments and observations in writing with the submissions analysed by the panel. The report was delivered in stages, starting with Working Group I's report on the physical science basis, based on 9,200 peer-reviewed studies. The summaries for policy makers were released on 27 September 2013 for the first report, on 31 March 2014 for the second report entitled "Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability", and on 14 April 2014 for the third report entitled "Mitigation of Climate Change". The Synthesis Report was released on 2 November 2014. It is anticipated that the Fifth Assessment Report will pave the way for a global, legally binding treaty on reducing carbon emissions at the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris during late 2015.