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EESI FACULTY ACTIVE IN INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE (IPCC)

The first volume of the IPCC 4 th Assessment Report was approved last week at the 10th session of Working Group I in Paris recently. These important reports are produced every 5 to 6 years to provide a comprehensive and up-to-date assessment of the current state of knowledge on climate change. They describe progress in understanding the human and natural drivers of climate change, observed climate change, climate processes and attribution, and estimates of projected future climate change. The 4 th Assessment Report builds upon past IPCC assessments and incorporates new findings from the past six years of research. Several EESI personnel are involved in this IPCC report, as Working Group members or as expert reviewers.

Richard Alley was in Paris (Jan-Feb 2007) as a member of Working Group 1. He served as one of the Lead Authors of Chapter 4 (Observations: Changes in Snow, Ice and Frozen Ground), as a Contributing Author to Chapter 10 (Global Climate Projections), as one of the Lead Authors for the Technical Summary, and as one of the Drafting Authors for the Summary for Policymakers. He testified to the US House of Representatives Science Committee about this material on February 8 th.

William Easterling is a convening Lead Author for the Working Group 2 (Impacts and Adaptation) chapter on implications of climate change for food (agriculture), forestry, and fisheries. He will travel to Brussels next month with the other convening authors to seek governments' approval of the Summary for Policy Makers. He is an author on the Summary for Policy Makers and the Technical Summary for Working Group 2. He has provided seminars to U. S. Senate staff on the evolving material of his chapter, particularly on the issue of how much boost in plant growth will occur as atmospheric CO 2 levels rise and what this means for global food production under climate change.

Michael Mann is an expert reviewer for this IPCC report. He provides commentary in the form of the "RealClimate" web site (www.realclimate.org), and has recently participated in a conference call with Pennsylvanian journalists; some articles in regional papers are listed below.