Working Group III prepares second draft of AR5 for review
Ottmar Edenhofer addressing the Working Group III authors at the third Lead Author Meeting in Vigo, Spain. Credit: Benjamin Kriemann/TSU
“Our expert reviewers have provided us with more that 16,000 comments to improve our first draft,” says Ottmar Edenhofer, Co-Chair of the IPCC Working Group III (WGIII), who is based at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. At the third lead author meeting in Vigo, Spain, in the beginning of November, the authors of the report discussed how to change their chapter drafts accordingly. In the process, each of the comments is considered and responded to. All responses will be published after the full fifth assessment report (AR5) is released in 2014.
The outline of the WGIII contribution to the AR5, as approved by the member governments of the IPCC, contains novelties as a dedicated chapter on human settlements, infrastructure and spatial planning and a framing chapter on social, economic and ethical concepts and methods. The authors will gather for a final, fourth meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in July 2013 to discuss the comments received on the second order draft.
“The review process is a vital part of the IPCC assessments,” says Edenhofer. “It helps to ensure high quality of the final report, it creates ownership by the commenting governments and it ensures transparency of a process that necessarily takes years to complete.”
