ADDIS ABABA, Oct 12 – The Sixty-Fifth Session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) began today in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. IPCC member governments are meeting from 12 to 16 October to advance the IPCC work planned for the seventh assessment cycle. The Panel’s agenda for this session includes several important topics, led by a discussion of the timelines for the three Working Group contributions to the Seventh Assessment Report. With the Working Groups having completed first drafts of their respective contributions to AR7, IPCC Chair Jim Skea stressed at the opening of the Plenary this afternoon the importance of the Panel reaching a decision on timelines for the authors of the three Working Group reports, who volunteer their time and expertise on the IPCC reports. ‘The Panel will revisit this week the topic of timelines for the three Working Group contributions to the Seventh Assessment Report. This remains a critical gap, one the Panel has signalled in the last Plenary that it is keen to bridge and close’, said IPCC Chair Jim Skea. During the five-day meeting, the IPCC member governments will also discuss the IPCC Trust Fund program and budget and the role of Artificial Intelligence in IPCC processes. The Panel will also consider the admission of new observer organisations and will receive progress reports from all parts of the IPCC, along with updates on key activities. Ethiopia’s Minister of Energy and Water, Habtamu Itefa Geleta, and the IPCC Chair, Jim Skea, welcomed delegates from member governments and observer organisations at the opening ceremony held this afternoon at the newly inaugurated Ethiopian Meteorological Institute. The opening also included screening of the video addresses by Celeste Saulo, the Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organization, Inger Andersen, the Executive Director of UN Environment Programme, and Simon Stiell, the Executive Director of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Except for the opening session, the IPCC Plenary meeting is closed to the media. Media assets, including speeches, visuals and video messages from the opening ceremony, will be available here For more information, contact:IPCC Press Office, Email: [email protected]; Andrej Mahecic, +41 22 730 8516; Werani Zabula, +41 22 730 8120; Notes for Editors What is the IPCC? The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the UN body for assessing the science related to climate change. It was established by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in 1988 to provide political leaders with periodic scientific assessments concerning climate change, its implications and risks, as well as to put forward adaptation and mitigation strategies. In the same year, the UN General Assembly endorsed the action by the WMO and UNEP in jointly establishing the IPCC. Participation in the IPCC is open to all member countries of WMO and the United Nations (UN). Thousands of experts from all over the world contribute to the work of the IPCC. For the assessment reports, experts volunteer their time as IPCC authors to assess the thousands of scientific papers published each year to provide a comprehensive summary of what is known about the drivers of climate change, its impacts and future risks, and how adaptation and mitigation can reduce those risks. The IPCC has three working groups: Working Group I, dealing with the physical science basis of climate change; Working Group II, dealing with impacts, adaptation and vulnerability; and Working Group III, dealing with the mitigation of climate change. It also has a Task Force on National Greenhouse Gas Inventories that develops methodologies for measuring emissions and removals. IPCC assessments provide governments, at all levels, with scientific information that they can use to develop climate policies. IPCC assessments are a key input into the international negotiations to tackle climate change. IPCC reports are drafted and reviewed in several stages, thus guaranteeing objectivity and transparency. About the Seventh Assessment CycleComprehensive scientific assessment reports are published every 5 to 7 years. The IPCC is currently in its seventh assessment cycle, which formally began in July 2023 with the elections of the new IPCC and Task Force Bureaus at the IPCC’s Plenary Session in Nairobi. At its first Plenary Session in the seventh assessment cycle – the 60th Plenary Session in Istanbul, Türkiye, in January 2024 – the Panel agreed to produce in this cycle the three Working Group contributions to the Seventh Assessment Report (AR7), namely the Working Group I report on the Physical Science Basis, the Working Group II report on Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability and the Working Group III report on Mitigation of Climate Change. The Synthesis Report of the Seventh Assessment Report will be produced after the completion of the Working Group reports and released by late 2029. During its 62nd Plenary Session held in Hangzhou, China, in February 2025, the Panel agreed on the outlines of the three Working Group contributions to the Seventh Assessment Report (AR7). At the Panel’s Plenary Session in Lima, Peru, in October 2025, member governments agreed on the scientific content of the 2027 Methodology Report on Carbon Dioxide Removal Technologies, Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage. There, the Panel also agreed on the 2026 workplan for the three Working Group contributions to the Seventh Assessment Report. The Panel decided already during the previous cycle to produce a Special Report on Climate Change and Cities and a Methodology Report on Short-lived Climate Forcers during AR7. At the IPCC’s 61st Plenary Session held in Sofia, Bulgaria, from 27 July to 2 August 2024, the Panel agreed upon the outlines for the Special Report on Climate Change and Cities scheduled for approval and publication in March 2027 and for the 2027 IPCC Methodology Report on Inventories for Short-lived Climate Forcers scheduled for publication in the second half of 2027. In addition, a revision of the 1994 IPCC Technical Guidelines on impacts and adaptation as well as adaptation indicators, metrics and guidelines, will be developed in conjunction with the Working Group II report and published as a separate product. IPCC’s latest report, the Sixth Assessment Report, was completed in March 2023 with the release of its Synthesis Report, which provided direct scientific input to the First Global Stocktake process under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change at COP28 in Dubai. For more information, visit www.ipcc.ch.