Founding of the IPCC (1988): The UN Climate Science Panel

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was founded in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to give governments clear, regular assessments of the science of climate change. It held its first meeting in Geneva in November 1988. Its reports have since become the main scientific basis for international climate negotiations, and in 2007 it shared the Nobel Peace Prize.

Background

Scientists had understood since the nineteenth century that carbon dioxide traps heat. From 1958 continuous measurements at Mauna Loa in Hawaii showed its concentration in the air rising every year. In the 1970s and 1980s computer models suggested this would warm the planet significantly.

The First World Climate Conference in Geneva in 1979 raised the issue internationally. A conference of scientists at Villach, Austria, in October 1985 concluded that greenhouse gases could cause a rise in global temperatures in the first half of the next century greater than any in human history, and called for closer cooperation between science and policy.

In 1988 climate change reached a wider public. During a hot, dry summer in North America, the NASA scientist James Hansen told a US Senate committee on 23 June that global warming had begun. A week later the Toronto conference on “The Changing Atmosphere” called for deep cuts in carbon dioxide emissions.

Creating the panel

Governments wanted a scientific body that they themselves would help run, rather than leaving the subject to independent experts. In 1987 the WMO’s governing council and UNEP’s governing council, led by Mostafa Tolba, agreed to set up an intergovernmental mechanism. The IPCC held its first session in Geneva from 9 to 11 November 1988 and elected the Swedish meteorologist Bert Bolin as its first chair. On 6 December 1988 the UN General Assembly endorsed the panel in Resolution 43/53.

The panel was organised into working groups. Today Working Group I assesses the physical science, Working Group II the impacts of climate change and adaptation, and Working Group III the options for reducing emissions. A small secretariat is based at the WMO in Geneva, and almost every country is a member.

How the IPCC works

The IPCC does not conduct its own research. Instead, hundreds of volunteer authors nominated by governments and organisations review thousands of published studies and summarise what is known and how confident scientists are. Drafts are reviewed by experts and governments. Each report’s Summary for Policymakers is approved line by line by government representatives, with scientists ensuring it stays consistent with the underlying report.

This structure gives the reports unusual authority, because governments have formally accepted them, but it also makes them cautious and slow to produce.

The assessment reports

The First Assessment Report in 1990 concluded that human activity was increasing greenhouse gas concentrations and that warming would follow. It informed the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, signed at the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992. The Second Report in 1995 found a “discernible human influence” on climate and fed into the Kyoto Protocol.

Later reports grew steadily more confident. The Fourth Report of 2007 called warming “unequivocal”. The Fifth, completed in 2014, provided the scientific basis for the Paris Agreement. The Sixth, completed in March 2023, stated that it is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land. A special report in 2018 compared the effects of 1.5 and 2 degrees Celsius of warming.

Nobel Prize and criticism

In 2007 the IPCC and the former US Vice President Al Gore shared the Nobel Peace Prize for their work in building and spreading knowledge about man-made climate change. The IPCC chair, Rajendra Pachauri, accepted the prize in Oslo on the panel’s behalf.

The IPCC has also faced criticism. In 2010 an error came to light in the 2007 report, which wrongly stated that Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035. A review by the InterAcademy Council later that year recommended reforms to management and to the handling of uncertainty and sources. Some critics argue the reports understate risks, others that they overstate them; the panel’s core findings have nonetheless been reinforced in every cycle.

Timeline

• 1979, February: The First World Climate Conference is held in Geneva.
• 1985, October: The Villach conference warns of significant greenhouse warming.
• 1988, 23 June: James Hansen testifies to the US Senate.
• 1988, 9–11 November: The IPCC holds its first session in Geneva.
• 1988, 6 December: The UN General Assembly endorses the IPCC.
• 1990, August: The First Assessment Report is completed.
• 2007, 10 December: The IPCC receives the Nobel Peace Prize jointly with Al Gore.
• 2023, March: The Sixth Assessment cycle ends with its Synthesis Report.

Why it matters

The IPCC turned a scattered body of research into an agreed scientific picture that governments could not easily ignore. Every major climate treaty since 1992 has drawn on its findings, and its reports remain the standard reference on the causes and effects of climate change.