NZ Climate Change Centre

On Thursday 5 May 2011, approximately 60 participants attended a workshop at the James Cook Hotel Grand Chancellor in Wellington to hear from lead authors (from Australia and New Zealand) about the scope of the ‘Australasia' chapter for the upcoming Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report (AR5).

The purpose of the workshop was to provide an overview of the process and possible key elements of the ‘Australasia' chapter which will assess impacts, vulnerability, and adaptation to climate change for Australia and New Zealand, including links with mitigation, and to get initial perspective and key material relevant to this assessment from the New Zealand research community and relevant end-users from policy, business and civil society.

The purpose of the workshop was not to discuss what the main conclusions of the assessment ought to be, but to help the authors of the assessment to understand issues that are of key interest to end-users of the IPCC assessment, and to ensure that the authors of the chapter are aware of relevant literature that exists in New Zealand on these key issues to inform their assessment.

Workshop-related outputs:

Coordinating lead authors, Andy Reisinger and Roger Kitching delivered an overview presentation of the IPCC process, chapter timeline, and initial draft topic outlines for the ‘Australasia' chapter. Access their presentation here.

The authors of the chapter are requesting experts and interested stakeholders to contact them with feedback on key issues the chapter could consider, and to provide them with relevant published material that could inform their assessment (peer reviewed academic literature as well as technical reports, conference proceedings etc).

The coordinating lead authors can be contacted directly via email:

Andy Reisinger: andy.reisinger@nzagrc.org.nz

Roger Kitching: r.kitching@griffith.edu.au

Additional information regarding this request for assistance in compiling relevant literature can be found here.

Further information regarding the Australasia chapter, including biographies of the New Zealand and Australia who are contributing to it, can be found here.

Background information on the IPCC as a whole and its process in relation to the Fifth Assessment Report can be found here.

Other New Zealand researchers are involved in other aspects of the IPCC assessment, and more information on New Zealand inputs to the IPCC process, and details of other authors' participation, can be found here.

The original workshop advertising flyer can be viewed here.

Roger Kitching (Griffith University)			Andy Reisinger (NZAGRC)