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Abstract:
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Established in 1988, the IPCC is now undertaking its 6th assessment. The primary product of each assessment is a set of comprehensive reports that rigorously evaluate our current understanding of climate change, its impacts and risks, adaptation approaches and mitigation options. The reports are a critical input for climate negotiations under the auspices of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. The IPCC has evolved successively more sophisticated approaches for characterizing uncertainty in its reports, with language and concepts that are adapted to each of its working groups, and that in many respects, are borrowed from statistics. Much of the science that is assessed, starting with that of how the climate has varied over the historical instrumental data period and on longer paleoclimatic timescales, has aspects that are fundamentally statistical in nature. Nevertheless, statisticians have not been extensively involved in the IPCC. This talk explores the reasons for this lack of participation, which appears to stem from multiple causes that reflect the characteristics of both climate and statistical science. It will also consider how participation can be improved.
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