Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) with the aim of being an 'objective source of information about climate change'. The IPCC regularly evaluates published scientific, technical and socio-economic material relevant to the understanding of climate change. It also produces authoritative reports, which in the early 1990s contributed to the creation of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

The structure of the IPCC is as follows:

Working Group I, which covers the physical science of climate change.
Working Group II, which deals with adaptation to climate change and assesses its impacts and vulnerability.
Working Group III, which deals with the mitigation of climate change.
Task Force on National Greenhouse Gas Inventories (TFI), which oversees the IPCC National Greenhouse Gas Inventories Programme.

In September 2008, the IPCC celebrated its 20th anniversary. It continues to be a major source of information for the UNFCCC-led negotiations on global climate change policy. Some recent publications of the IPCC include Technical paper VI—climate change and water, published in June 2008, and IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), published on 17 November 2007.

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