7 February 2012: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has issued an announcement on the review process for Working Group contributions to the fifth Assessment Report (AR5).

According to the IPCC announcement, the review process will involve several stages, including a “first-order draft” (FOD) by scientific experts, a “second order draft” (SOD) by experts and governments, and a government review of the final draft of the summary for policymakers.

The document also sets out the dates for reviews of the FOD and SOD for each Working Group. For Working Group I (The Physical Science Basis), the deadline for review of the FOD is 10 February 2012, while the review period for the SOD is 5 October-30 November 2012. For Working Group II (Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability), the review periods are 11 June-6 August 2012 (FOD) and 29 March-24 May 2013 (SOD). For Working Group III (Mitigation of Climate Change), the review periods are 22 June-20 August 2012 (FOD) and 25 February-22 April 2013 (SOD). The document also clarifies how experts can contribute to the process.

On transparency, the document explains that IPCC member governments have decided that draft reports will not be made public before the final document is approved because “statements these are work in progress may get lost and selective quotation could give wrong perceptions of science and [result in] misleading conclusions.” Drafts will therefore be provided “in confidence” to reviewers and are not for public distribution, quotation or citation. [IPCC Announcement]