Image: 'Changing' by Alisa Singer - Source IPCC

Event d​​​​ate:   15 September 2021, 11am-4pm

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was formed in 1990 to provide governments with an assessment of the latest science of climate change. It has produced five major assessment reports covering the basic science, impacts and adaptation and mitigation, roughly every five to seven years.

These reports have guided how the world responds to climate change and provided the foundation for the 2015 Paris Agreement. As part of the Agreement, governments decided to keep a rise in global temperatures, due to human activity, well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5°C.

The IPCC 6^th Assessment of the Science has now been published (9 August). This event in collaboration with the Grantham Institute, BEIS, Met Office, IPCC and NCAS, will review its main findings and consider what it means for the ongoing development of our response to climate change. It will also consider what message the report sends to world leaders before they meet in Glasgow at COP26. Speakers and panellists will include leading scientists involved in the report and those who are actively involved with making decisions on climate change actions.

The programme for this event is now confirmed as per below with the full list of speakers to be announced soon.

Session 1 – Findings of the Report

Introduction from Chair: Prof. Tim Osborn – University of East Anglia

Global Climate Change:

1. Observations and causes (Prof. Peter Thorne – Maynooth University)
2. Future projections (Dr Amanda Maycock – University of Leeds)
3. Regional change /interactive atlas (Richard Jones – Met Office) 

Q&A

Risks and Uncertainty: 

1. Emissions, the carbon cycle and Paris goals (Dr Joeri Rogelj - Grantham Institute, Imperial College London)
2. Extremes and Surprises (Prof. Sonia Seneviratne - ETH Zürich)
3. Sea Level Rise (Dr Tamsin Edwards – Kings College London)         

Q&A

Summing up

LUNCH

Session 2 - What are the implications?

Introduction from Chair: Richard Black – Grantham Institute, Imperial College London

Ministerial statement (TBC)

Panel discussion and Q&A on the implications for COP26 and emissions (Speakers TBC)

Panel discussion and Q&A on the implications for UK adaptation (Speakers TBC)

Summing up

CLOSE

To register for this FREE virtual event, visit our Events page.

A follow up virtual event, "Responding to the climate crisis - taking action on the IPCC 6th Assessment Report", will be hosted by the Grantham Institute – Climate Change and the Environment (Imperial College London) on Friday 17 September 10:00 – 12:30 looking at what the report means for specific sectors.

The implications of climate change require rapid, but well-managed and coordinated action from all areas of business and society, so a second meeting will be held for decision and policy-making organisations, individuals and stakeholders. Sector representatives will work with the Grantham Institute to design hour-long workshops to answer questions relevant to their stakeholders.

Register for this event to join facilitated sessions where you will discuss what the IPCC 6th Assessment Report means for your sector, make new connections, and propose collaborative ways to meet the challenges of climate change.

A full list of the workshops and sector representatives will be confirmed closer to the date.

• If you are interested in leading one of these workshops as a representative of your sector - please register via this link.

• If you are interested in attending the workshops as a participant - please register via this link.