17 February 2009: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Secretariat is organizing a scoping meeting for its Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) from 13-17 July 2009, in Venice, Italy.

At its 28th session, from 9-10 April 2008, in Budapest, Hungary, the Panel decided to carry out a Fifth Assessment, to be finalized in 2014, with a target date of early 2013 for the release of the Working Group I report. It further decided that the present focus and structure of IPCC Working Groups will be retained with three Working Groups dealing respectively with the “Physical Science Basis,” “Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability” and “Mitigation of Climate Change.” The Panel noted, inter alia, that the new assessment should take into account recent scientific and policy developments, including integrated treatment of adaptation and mitigation within an integrated sustainable development strategy, and the development of a regional approach to complement the global one. IPCC members also agreed that the new assessment work should be organized around a revised set of scenarios of socioeconomic, climate and environmental conditions, currently prepared by the scientific community. A number of submissions on the future of the IPCC have been received from governments, experts and organizations and a task group was set up to facilitate the consideration of the submissions in the scoping of AR5. At its 30th session, which is scheduled to take place from 21-23 April 2009, in Antalya, Turkey, the Panel will provide further guidance.
The scoping meeting will result in a scoping paper describing the objectives and an annotated outline of AR5 and its Working Group contributions, as well as the process and timeline for its preparation, within the overall timeframe decided by the Panel. The draft scoping paper will be circulated for comments to organizations and will then be submitted for consideration and approval to the sessions of the three IPCC Working Groups and the 31st Session of the IPCC, scheduled to be held in November 2009 (date and venue to be announced).
Governments and international and other organizations are invited to submit their nominations for the scoping meeting to the IPCC Secretariat by 27 March 2009. [Information on the Scoping Meeting]