Photo: Judd McCullum, Flickr
The United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has appointed three Australian National University (ANU) climate experts as lead authors for its Sixth Assessment Report to be published in 2022.
Professors Frank Jotzo and Xuemei Bai and DR Kathryn Bowen will be part of the report, which will guide the first full global stocktake in 2023, when nations will decide on new or enhanced actions needed to achieve the Paris Agreement’s climate goals, primarily keeping temperature rises below 2ºC above pre-industrial levels.
Climate Change Institute Director at the ANU, Mark Howden said the appointment of the three academics and 37 other Australian scientists was a testament to Australia’s research strength in climate change.
“It is particularly pleasing to see improved gender balance, with women now being 40 per cent of the Australians in the author teams — a significant increase compared with the previous IPCC report,” Professor Howden said.
“Countries around the world are increasingly experiencing the effects of extreme weather, and the IPCC’s work is vital to address this and many other problems linked to human-caused climate change.”
He said that last year more than 1,000 people died and 45 million people lost homes, livelihoods and services when unprecedented severe floods hit South East Asia.
Professor Howden said it was predicted that by 2030, millions of people and trillions of dollars of infrastructure globally will be at risk from flooding, drought, wildfires and other natural disasters.
He said the IPCC had invited 721 experts from 90 countries to participate in the Sixth Assessment Report as coordinating lead authors, lead authors and review editors.
