Published on EGEE 401: Energy in a Changing World (https://www.e-education.psu.edu/egee401)

Home > EGEE 401 > Unit 2, Lesson 3 > Climate Change Background

Climate Change Background

Since 1990, the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) has issued five major "assessment reports" on the state of the climate. In 2007, the IPCC, along with Al Gore, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize [1] "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change."

The IPCC is currently in its Sixth Assessment cycle.

To understand energy and energy's relationship to climate in a ever changing world, it is helpful and very interesting to hold an essential understanding of climate science and climate science research. What do we know about climate change, how do we know it, why can we trust it, what can we expect in the future, how will our actions (and energy choices) today affect the future climate? The IPCC is the world's best effort to answer these very big questions.

In this lesson, we are going to learn about the IPCC and how it does this important work and try to answer some of the big questions just listed!

Reading Assignment

Visit the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC). [2]

Read the "Organization" main page, and review closely the IPCC sections Structure, History and Election Results.

The IPCC began release of the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), with release of Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Chapter 1 of this report includes a table summarizing major conclusions from the four earlier reports. This information provides perspective and context for the new report.

Reading Assignment

Review closely:

Table 1.1 Historical Overview of major conclusions of previous IPCC assessment reports [3] (from AR5 WGI Chapter 1 Introduction.)

 


Source URL: https://www.e-education.psu.edu/egee401/content/p3_p6.html

Links
[1] http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2007/
[2] http://www.ipcc.ch/index.htm
[3] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/egee401/sites/www.e-education.psu.edu.egee401/files/WG1AR5_Chapter01_FINAL%20TABLE%20summarizing%20all%20years.pdf