NZ Climate Change Centre

Similar to previous IPCC assessments, the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) will be compiled over several years and will involve the following process:

• Author teams compile a First Order Draft
• Expert reviewers review First Order Draft
• Author teams meet twice to re-draft chapters taking account of expert comments to produce a Second Order Draft
• Experts and governments review Second Order Draft
• Author teams consider Second Order Draft comments and produce a Final Order Draft and a draft Summary for Policymakers (SPM)
• Governments review Final Order Draft and SPM
• Author teams meet just prior to an approval plenary session to consider final government comments on the SPM and prepare suggested amendments if necessary
• Government representatives work through the (revised) SPM with IPCC authors on a line-by-line basis
• Once all IPCC governments are happy with how the final text reads the SPM is approved and the underlying working group report is accepted.
• The Technical Support Units then finalise the official Working Group reports
• Following the finalisation of the English version, the SPMs will then be translated into the six official languages of the IPCC.

The final Plenary Sessions to consider the SPMs are planned for the following dates:

• Working Group I: 23-26 September 2013
• Working Group II: 17-21 March 2014
• Working Group III: 7-11 April 2014
• Synthesis Report: October 2014

Further information regarding the scope and process of the AR5 can be found on the IPCC website here. Additional detail regarding dates and other aspects of the process can be found on the individual Working Group webpages here.

AR5 production timeline

Provisional schedule, subject to change.

Synthesis Report

The following provisional dates for the production of the Synthesis Report were developed at the 32nd Session of the IPCC in Liege, Belgium in August 2010. Dates are subject to change.

Cut-off dates for accepting literature

The IPCC assessment is based wherever possible on peer-reviewed literature. This means papers have to be published, or accepted for publication in a reputable journal with an electronic copy submitted to the relevant TSU, to be included in the AR5.

The cut-off date by which papers need to be available is generally the date when the second-order draft is circulated for join expert/government review. The exact dates for cut-off for each report have not yet been officially determined, but the dates below provide an indication of likely cut-off dates based on current timelines and the practice in previous IPCC assessments.