Global warming pause ‘central’ to IPCC climate report

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) meets this week in Sweden to thrash out a critical report on global warming.Scientists will underline, with greater certainty than ever, the role of human activities in rising temperatures.But many governments are demanding a clearer explanation of the slowdown in temperature increases since 1998.One participant told BBC News that this pause will be a “central piece” of the summary.Researchers from all over the world work with the IPCC to pore over thousands of peer-reviewed studies and produce a summary representing the current state of climate science.Its previous report in 2007 was instrumental in helping the panel share the Nobel Peace Prize that year.A new Summary for Policymakers on the physical sciences, the first of three parts that make up a report to be released over the next 12 months, will be published in Stockholm on Friday.It will focus on the science underlying changes in temperature in the atmosphere, the oceans and at the poles.New estimates will be given for the scale of global warming and its impact on sea levels, glaciers and ice sheets.