A. Introduction

A.1 The IPCC and its Working Groups

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in 1988. The aim was, and remains, to provide an assessment of the understanding of all aspects of climate change¹, including how human activities can cause such changes and can be impacted by them. It had become widely recognised that human-influenced emissions of greenhouse gases have the potential to alter the climate system (see Box 1), with possible deleterious or beneficial effects. It was also recognised that addressing such global issues required organisation on a global scale, including assessment of the understanding of the issue by the worldwide expert communities.

At its first session, the IPCC was organised into three Working Groups. The current remits of the Working Groups are for Working Group I to address the scientific aspects of the climate system and climate change, Working Group II to address the impacts of and adaptations to climate change, and Working Group III to address the options for the mitigation of climate change. The IPCC provided its first major assessment report in 1990 and its second major assessment report in 1996.

The IPCC reports are (i) up-to-date descriptions of the knowns and unknowns of the climate system and related factors, (ii) based on the knowledge of the international expert communities, (iii) produced by an open and peer-reviewed professional process, and (iv) based upon scientific publications whose findings are summarised in terms useful to decision makers. While the assessed information is policy relevant, the IPCC does not establish or advocate public policy.

The scope of the assessments of Working Group I includes observations of the current changes and trends in the climate system, a reconstruction of past changes and trends, an understanding of the processes involved in those changes, and the incorporation of this knowledge into models that can attribute the causes of changes and that can provide simulation of natural and human-induced future changes in the climate system.

Box 1: What drives changes in climate?

The Earth absorbs radiation from the Sun, mainly at the surface. This energy is then redistributed by the atmospheric and oceanic circulations and radiated back to space at longer (infrared) wavelengths. For the annual mean and for the Earth as a whole, the incoming solar radiation energy is balanced approximately by the outgoing terrestrial radiation. Any factor that alters the radiation received from the Sun or lost to space, or that alters the redistribution of energy within the atmosphere and between the atmosphere, land, and ocean, can affect climate. A change in the net radiative energy available to the global Earth-atmosphere system is termed here, and in previous IPCC reports, a radiative forcing. Positive radiative forcings tend to warm the Earth's surface and lower atmosphere. Negative radiative forcings tend to cool them.

Increases in the concentrations of greenhouse gases will reduce the efficiency with which the Earth's surface radiates to space. More of the outgoing terrestrial radiation from the surface is absorbed by the atmosphere and re-emitted at higher altitudes and lower temperatures. This results in a positive radiative forcing that tends to warm the lower atmosphere and surface. Because less heat escapes to space, this is the enhanced greenhouse effect – an enhancement of an effect that has operated in the Earth's atmosphere for billions of years due to the presence of naturally occurring greenhouse gases: water vapour, carbon dioxide, ozone, methane and nitrous oxide. The amount of radiative forcing depends on the size of the increase in concentration of each greenhouse gas, the radiative properties of the gases involved, and the concentrations of other greenhouse gases already present in the atmosphere. Further, many greenhouse gases reside in the atmosphere for centuries after being emitted, thereby introducing a long-term commitment to positive radiative forcing.

Anthropogenic aerosols (microscopic airborne particles or droplets) in the troposphere, such as those derived from fossil fuel and biomass burning, can reflect solar radiation, which leads to a cooling tendency in the climate system. Because it can absorb solar radiation, black carbon (soot) aerosol tends to warm the climate system. In addition, changes in aerosol concentrations can alter cloud amount and cloud reflectivity through their effect on cloud properties and lifetimes. In most cases, tropospheric aerosols tend to produce a negative radiative forcing and a cooler climate. They have a much shorter lifetime (days to weeks) than most greenhouse gases (decades to centuries), and, as a result, their concentrations respond much more quickly to changes in emissions.

Volcanic activity can inject large amounts of sulphur-containing gases (primarily sulphur dioxide) into the stratosphere, which are transformed into sulphate aerosols. Individual eruptions can produce a large, but transitory, negative radiative forcing, tending to cool the Earth's surface and lower atmosphere over periods of a few years.

The Sun's output of energy varies by small amounts (0.1%) over an 11-year cycle and, in addition, variations over longer periods may occur. On time-scales of tens to thousands of years, slow variations in the Earth's orbit, which are well understood, have led to changes in the seasonal and latitudinal distribution of solar radiation. These changes have played an important part in controlling the variations of climate in the distant past, such as the glacial and inter-glacial cycles.

When radiative forcing changes, the climate system responds on various time-scales. The longest of these are due to the large heat capacity of the deep ocean and dynamic adjustment of the ice sheets. This means that the transient response to a change (either positive or negative) may last for thousands of years. Any changes in the radiative balance of the Earth, including those due to an increase in greenhouse gases or in aerosols, will alter the global hydrological cycle and atmospheric and oceanic circulation, thereby affecting weather patterns and regional temperatures and precipitation.

Any human-induced changes in climate will be embedded in a background of natural climatic variations that occur on a whole range of time- and space-scales. Climate variability can occur as a result of natural changes in the forcing of the climate system, for example variations in the strength of the incoming solar radiation and changes in the concentrations of aerosols arising from volcanic eruptions. Natural climate variations can also occur in the absence of a change in external forcing, as a result of complex interactions between components of the climate system, such as the coupling between the atmosphere and ocean. The El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon is an example of such natural "internal" variability on interannual time-scales. To distinguish anthropogenic climate changes from natural variations, it is necessary to identify the anthropogenic "signal" against the background "noise" of natural climate variability.

A.2 The First and Second Assessment Reports of Working Group I

In the First Assessment Report in 1990, Working Group I broadly described the status of the understanding of the climate system and climate change that had been gained over the preceding decades of research. Several major points were emphasised. The greenhouse effect is a natural feature of the planet, and its fundamental physics is well understood. The atmospheric abundances of greenhouse gases were increasing, due largely to human activities. Continued future growth in greenhouse gas emissions was predicted to lead to significant increases in the average surface temperature of the planet, increases that would exceed the natural variation of the past several millennia and that could be reversed only slowly. The past century had, at that time, seen a surface warming of nearly 0.5°C, which was broadly consistent with that predicted by climate models for the greenhouse gas increases, but was also comparable to what was then known about natural variation. Lastly, it was pointed out that the current level of understanding at that time and the existing capabilities of climate models limited the prediction of changes in the climate of specific regions.

Based on the results of additional research and Special Reports produced in the interim, IPCC Working Group I assessed the new state of understanding in its Second Assessment Report (SAR²) in 1996. The report underscored that greenhouse gas abundances continued to increase in the atmosphere and that very substantial cuts in emissions would be required for stabilisation of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere (which is the ultimate goal of Article 2 of the Framework Convention on Climate Change). Further, the general increase in global temperature continued, with recent years being the warmest since at least 1860. The ability of climate models to simulate observed events and trends had improved, particularly with the inclusion of sulphate aerosols and stratospheric ozone as radiative forcing agents in climate models. Utilising this simulative capability to compare to the observed patterns of regional temperature changes, the report concluded that the ability to quantify the human influence on global climate was limited. The limitations arose because the expected signal was still emerging from the noise of natural variability and because of uncertainties in other key factors. Nevertheless, the report also concluded that "the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate". Lastly, based on a range of scenarios of future greenhouse gas abundances, a set of responses of the climate system was simulated.

Figure 1: Key questions about the climate system and its relation to humankind. This Technical Summary, which is based on the underlying information in the chapters, is a status report on the answers, presented in the structure indicated.

A.3 The Third Assessment Report: This Technical Summary

The third major assessment report of IPCC Working Group I builds upon these past assessments and incorporates the results of the past five years of climate research. This Technical Summary is based on the underlying information of the chapters, which is cross-referenced in the Source Notes in the Appendix. This Summary aims to describe the major features (see Figure 1) of the understanding of the climate system and climate change at the outset of the 21st century. Specifically:

What does the observational record show with regard to past climate changes, both globally and regionally and both on the average and in the extremes? (Section B)
How quantitative is the understanding of the agents that cause climate to change, including both those that are natural (e.g., solar variation) and human-related (e.g., greenhouse gases) phenomena? (Section C)
What is the current ability to simulate the responses of the climate system to these forcing agents? In particular, how well are key physical and biogeochemical processes described by present global climate models? (Section D)
Based on today's observational data and today's climate predictive capabilities, what does the comparison show regarding a human influence on today's climate? (Section E)
Further, using current predictive tools, what could the possible climate future be? Namely, for a wide spectrum of projections for several climate-forcing agents, what does current understanding project for global temperatures, regional patterns of precipitation, sea levels, and changes in extremes? (Section F)

Finally, what are the most urgent research activities that need to be addressed to improve our understanding of the climate system and to reduce our uncertainty regarding future climate change?

The Third Assessment Report of IPCC Working Group I is the product of hundreds of scientists from the developed and developing world who contributed to its preparation and review. What follows is a summary of their understanding of the climate system.

Other reports in this collection