Origins: Discovering the first clues to climate change

At the time, the International Geophysical Year had such an impact on popular culture that Donald Fagen wrote a song about it.

 

In 1967, ICSU and WMO launched a global programme to better understand the behaviour of the atmosphere and the physical basis of climate. The aim of the Global Atmospheric Research Programme (GARP) was to improve the models used for weather forecasting, but eventually it would be drawn into the climate issue. In 1967, a study had noted that a doubling of the CO₂ content of the atmosphere would lead to an increase in global mean temperature of 2°C. In the next decade, other researchers found that there had already been an increase of mean temperature in the Northern hemisphere in the first decades of the twentieth century. The open question at the time was whether this was a natural variation or a human-induced change. This spurred interest in climate change in, for example, the ecology and geology communities. In 1980, ICSU and WMO decided to transform the GARP programme into an forum for international cooperation in climate research. GARP became the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), still making important contributions to modern climate science.

 

There was, however, still very little effort to synthesize available knowledge about the climate change phenomenon. An initial assessment was prepared by the US National Academy of Science in 1977, aimed at a scientific audience. In 1979, WMO and UNEP organized a first Word Climate Conference. However, the conference focused almost exclusively on the physical basis of climate change. It was lacking in contributions from other disciplines and, apart from a call for more resources for climate research, did not make any attempts to reach out of the academic circles and create awareness of the issue.

 

Villach I: Gathering the pieces of the puzzle

Shortly thereafter, however, ICSU, UNEP and WMO decided it was time for change. They called for a different meeting. It was time for scientists to step outside of the silos of their individual disciplines. It was time to bring the knowledge gathered by national studies together. In October 1980, they called the elite of global climate science to Villach to assemble the pieces of the puzzle. The meeting was an intimate, international gathering of top-level scientists studying climate change phenomena, bringing together physicists, chemists, meteorologists, geographers, and other disciplines.

 

Peter Liss, a chemical oceanographer, attended the meeting. He remembers that “Villach 1980 was a seminal meeting. This is when the scientists convinced themselves that this was serious. The models were telling us that it was going to happen.” He recalls that this was the first time that scientists from different disciplines brought together the state of knowledge within their field to paint a bigger picture. “People were working on a lot of different aspects at the time, but this brought it all together showing that this was a big, global problem,” he says. They worked out a statement that warned that “the probability that these potentially serious impacts may be realized is sufficiently great” to justify a concerted effort to improve the understanding of the changes underway was needed and that “it is essential that the research proposed here be undertaken as a matter of urgency.”

 

 

Report of the 1980 Villach meeting

 

However, at the time, the outcomes of the meeting were not widely circulated. In his semi-autobiographical account of the creation of the IPCC, Bert Bolin, who chaired the meeting, describes how on the train ride home from that conference, he and other participants discussed that something bigger was needed. Bolin says he was of the clear view that “an analysis that was wider in scope, greater in depth and more international was most desirable.”

 

Villach 1985: A call to policy-makers

That analysis was initiated by UNEP shortly after the conference. It became the report “The assessment of the role of carbon dioxide and of other greenhouse gases in climate variations and associated impacts”. In 1985, a second Villach conference, again organized by ICSU, UNEP and WMO, met to discuss the results of the study. It became clear that the combined effect of all greenhouse gases could mean the equivalent of a doubling of atmospheric CO₂ concentrations might be on the horizon before the middle of the 21st century. Climate change was becoming a much more urgent issue than previously thought.

 

The scientists concluded that current convictions guiding investments and social decisions that were based on the climate system remaining stable were “no longer a good assumption,” because greenhouse gases were expected to cause a warming of global temperatures “which is greater than any in man’s history.” For the first time, they called for a collaboration between scientists and policymakers, stating that the two groups “should begin active collaboration to explore the effectiveness of alternative policies and adjustments.”

 

Bert Bolin in an undated photograph. Photo: The Royal Swedish Academy of Science (KVA)

 

The 1985 Villach conference recommended that a task force should further study the issue, and ICSU, WMO and UNEP formed the “Advisory Group on Greenhouse Gases (AGGG)”, with two members nominated by each organization. The group was more aimed towards informing the leadership of the three organizations, rather than engage with policy-makers. Its limitations were soon becoming obvious.

The ozone layer, droughts and a media moment

By then, however, political momentum had picked up. Possibly seeing an opportunity following the process that led to the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, UNEP Executive Director Mostafa Tolba pushed for an international convention on climate change. In Toronto, the “International Conference on the Changing Atmosphere: Implications for Global Security” issued a stark warning: human impact on the planet was leading to a multitude of environmental changes ranging from depletion of the ozone layer to global warming and sea level rise, and was “likely to cause severe economic and social dislocation.” An unusually hot summer in the USA led to worries about food security, bringing the issue into public discussions. In part due to support from parts of the influential U.S. administration, planning soon was underway for an intergovernmental science-policy mechanism that was to create regular assessments of the state of science on climate change, its impacts and potential response strategies.

 

Both the political and the scientific community now agreed that action was needed. All of a sudden, there was a perfect storm. The fact that there was an increasing body of knowledge that needed to be assessed, that governments were starting to see the need for such an assessment, and the convening efforts of the WMO and UNEP. The scientists involved in the Villach meetings, on the other hand, felt that, now that they had succeeded in bringing the issue to the political agenda, it was appropriate to maintain the independence of research. Scientific work should be performed independently of any government.

 

That is why ICSU at the time concentrated on rallying the scientific community around the big research questions in climate change, global ecology and biogeochemistry. It founded the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) in 1986, which became a major supplier of knowledge to the IPCC assessments. In 2014, the IGBP merged with two other ICSU-sponsored environmental research programmes (the International Human Dimensions Programme (IHDP) and DIVERSITAS), to form Future Earth, which is now working to supply the scientific basis for a sustainable future. WCRP continues its contributions to the analysis and prediction of climate change as part of Earth system change.

 

The intergovernmental nature of the new assessment body, on the other hand, made it a natural fit within the remit of WMO and UNEP, both intergovernmental organizations. They went on to form the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988, whose anniversary we are celebrating this week. Happy Birthday, IPCC!

 

Originally posted by the International Council for Science

 

Banner and thumbnail photos: 

First session of the IPCC in 1988. Photo Credit: IPCC

1) Current NDCs Need to Be Strengthened to Achieve the Goals of the Paris Agreement

2) Parties Can Seize Economic and Social Benefits of Updating their NDCs

The current NDCs were developed by Parties ahead of Paris, quickly and with no certainty of the final outcome. With the Paris Agreement now in force and with implementation guidelines to be finalized at the end of 2018, Parties can factor in recent innovations and declining costs of renewable energy to take advantage of opportunities in key sectors to send accurate signals to investors. Many countries have long-term plans and strategies related to climate, development, and economic objectives. Taking the opportunity now to align NDCs with these long-term goals and strategies will avoid locking in high emissions that will exacerbate climate vulnerabilities. For example, analysis has revealed the high potential for synergies between achieving the Sustainable Development Goals and the NDCs.

The next years could offer new areas of cost-effective climate action. Lastly, many countries have already made substantial progress and some appear to be on track to exceed the targets in their current NDCs.

3) It Provides an Opportunity to Engage Stakeholders and Create Support for Climate Action

4) This Can Send Powerful Signals to Decision-Makers

To help countries identify promising avenues to bring their NDCs into line with the Paris Agreement by 2020, we have developed a menu of options for NDC enhancement.

 

The options cover ways to enhance mitigation ambition and strengthen NDC content on adaptation and implementation and to improve the clarity and transparency with which NDCs are communicated. These options are not mutually exclusive. In many cases, it will be feasible and desirable for a country to strengthen mitigation ambition as well as other facets of their NDC by pursuing multiple options at once. 

The year 2020 will serve as a critical test of the ability of the Paris Agreement to deliver enhanced ambition over time until our collective goals are reached. Countries can do their part by exploring and enacting meaningful options to enhance their NDCs as soon as possible.

 

This blog post was originally published on Insights, World Resources Institute

Banner and thumbnail photos credit to Max Thabiso Edkins / Connect4Climate

Mitchell de La O, Costa Rican fashion designer 

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