intergovernmental panel on climate change (ipcc) … panel on climate change (ipcc) meeting in...

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Meeting in Brazil Patrick Gonzalez

Introduction

In 2011, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) invited the National

Park Service (NPS) Climate Change Scientist, Dr. Patrick Gonzalez, to serve as a lead author for

the 2013 Supplement to the 2006 IPCC Guidelines on National Greenhouse Gas Inventories:

Wetlands. IPCC is producing the report to provide scientifically robust international standard

methods to quantify greenhouse gas emissions and storage in wetland ecosystems and organic

soils. To assess the scientific literature and write the report, IPCC convened a series of four

meetings of the lead authors. Dr. Gonzalez participated in the fourth lead authors meeting, hosted

by the Government of Brazil at the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia (National

Institute for Research in Amazonia) in Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil, May 20-24, 2013.

Greenhouse gases from power plants, motor vehicles, deforestation, and other human

activities cause climate change, which is reducing snowpack, melting glaciers, raising sea level,

increasing tree mortality, and shifting vegetation in U.S. national parks (Gonzalez 2011) and

around the world (IPCC 2007a, b). The service of Dr. Gonzalez on the IPCC advances the NPS

mission by contributing to the reduction of climate change, its impacts on national parks, and the

scientific basis for managing resources under climate change. NPS uses the IPCC Guidelines on

National Greenhouse Gas Inventories (IPCC 2006) as a rigorous scientific basis to quantify and

reduce greenhouse gas emissions from park operations and to quantify carbon storage in

ecosystems, a benefit of resource management actions such as forest conservation and wetland

habitat restoration. Wetland ecosystems (Figure 1, page 10) cover 3% of the area of the National

Parks and organic soils (Figure 2, page 11) underlie 23%. Together, wetlands and organic soils

cover 24% of the area of the national parks. So, the new IPCC guidelines for wetlands will be

applicable to one-quarter of the National Park system.

Service of Dr. Gonzalez on the IPCC addresses science and mitigation goals of the NPS

Climate Change Response Strategy (issued by the NPS Director in 2010) and directly implements

an action in the NPS Climate Change Action Plan (issued by the NPS Director in 2012):

“Participate in international and national climate change science and adaptation synthesis and

assessment studies.” Participation of Dr. Gonzalez in the IPCC directly links NPS to scientists in

26 countries (Figure 3), provides positive exposure for NPS, and enhances its scientific credibility

by placing an NPS scientist on the most respected climate change science panel.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

The World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment

Programme established IPCC in 1988 to provide a scientifically rigorous understanding of


climate change. IPCC is a United Nations panel and the United States is one of 194 IPCC

member nations. IPCC produces peer-reviewed published methods to quantify the greenhouse

gases that cause climate change (IPCC 2006) and assessments of the physical science, impacts,

adaptation, and reduction of climate change (IPCC 2007a, b, c). These publications comprise the

most comprehensive scientific treatments of climate change and constitute the standard references

for scientists and policymakers worldwide. IPCC reports are independent scientific assessments

that are policy-relevant, but not policy prescriptive. The Nobel Committee awarded IPCC and

former U.S. Vice-President Al Gore equal shares of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize “for their efforts

to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the

foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.”

The core of IPCC is a group of scientists nominated for their expertise in climate change

science. Dr. Gonzalez served as a lead author for two previous reports of the IPCC – Climate

Change 2001: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability (Desanker et al. 2001) and the IPCC

Guidelines on National Greenhouse Gas Inventories (Aalde et al. 2006a, b) – prior to joining the

NPS. With this third report, Dr. Gonzalez becomes the first NPS scientist to serve as an IPCC

author. Dr. Gonzalez also serves as a contributing author to two chapters of another upcoming

IPCC report, Climate Change 2013: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability.

The U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), to which the U.S. is a

party, periodically requests IPCC to answer key scientific questions on climate change. IPCC

provides the requested information in the form of peer-reviewed scientific publications. It

organizes scientific author teams for two main series of reports: the climate change assessment

reports and the guidelines on greenhouse gas inventories. IPCC also produces special reports on

specific subjects. Author teams meet to assess the published scientific literature, resolve scientific

issues, draft text, and respond to scientific and government review comments.

IPCC guidelines call for the nearly exclusive use of peer-reviewed scientific publications.

Each report goes through three rounds of review before publication: (1) Scientific review of the

entire report, (2) Scientific and government review of the entire report, (3) Government review of

the summary for policymakers. In the first review, scientists conduct a peer review of the first

draft for scientific accuracy and completeness. In the second review, scientists review a second

draft for scientific accuracy and completeness and government representatives review the second

draft for issues specific to countries and regions. In the third review, government representatives

review the summary for policymakers or overview section of the report and approve it word-for-

word. After each of the first two reviews, IPCC authors examine and write a reply to each

comment, and, if necessary, edit the report based on scientific considerations. In the third review,


government representatives do not change any of the main scientific findings. They only address

how IPCC summarizes those findings for policymakers.

After publication of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (IPCC 2007 a, b, c), consisting

of thousands of pages written and reviewed by hundreds of scientists, readers found two technical

errors. An independent analysis published by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency

(2010) found that “Overall, the summary conclusions are considered well founded and none were

found to contain any significant errors. The Working Group II contribution to the Fourth

Assessment Report shows ample observational evidence of regional climate change impacts,

which have been projected to pose substantial risks to most parts of the world, under increasing

temperatures.” The technical errors were too minor to affect the fundamental scientific

conclusions of the IPCC.

In addition, IPCC requested a scientific review of its procedures by the InterAcademy

Council (IAC), a multinational organization of 18 science academies, including the U.S. National

Academy of Sciences. IAC reported “The Committee found that the IPCC assessment process has

been successful overall” (IAC 2010). IAC recommended changes to the IPCC review process and

other procedures. IPCC in 2010 and 2011 formally adopted changes that strengthened scientific

review and are helping to prevent technical errors based on non-peer reviewed sources and

upgraded other procedures to improve the rigor of IPCC reports.

IPCC Lead Authors Meeting

Carbon in wetland ecosystems has emerged as an important area of scientific inquiry and

resource management. Consequently, the UNFCCC requested IPCC to refine the scientific

methods for quantifying carbon in wetlands and organic soils. IPCC requested nominations for

authors from all member countries and selected the final authors for the 2013 Supplement to the

2006 IPCC Guidelines on National Greenhouse Gas Inventories: Wetlands. The report will

provide scientifically robust international standard methods to quantify greenhouse gas emissions

and storage in wetland ecosystems and organic soils. To assess the scientific literature and write

the report, IPCC planned a series of four meetings of the lead authors.

The Government of Brazil hosted the fourth lead authors’ meeting at the Instituto

Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia (National Institute for Research in Amazonia) in Manaus,

Amazonas, Brazil, May 20-24, 2013. Brazil manages extensive areas of wetlands throughout the

Amazon River basin and in the Pantanal. Over sixty authors from 26 countries (Figure 3), review

editors, and IPCC and Brazil government staff participated in the meeting. Authors organized into

the groups writing the seven chapters: (1) Introduction, (2) Drained Inland Organic Soils, (3)


Rewetted and Restored Peatlands and Organic Soils, (4) Coastal Wetlands, (5) Inland Wetland

Mineral Soils, (6) Constructed Wetlands for Wastewater Treatment, and (7) Cross-Cutting Issues

and Reporting. Two Coordinating Lead Authors lead a team of Lead Authors for each chapter.

Dr. Gonzalez serves as a Lead Author for Chapter 7, which presents scientific guidelines

for data quality assurance and quality control, consistency of time series, quantification of

uncertainties, and data reporting standards. This work takes advantage of previously published

research by Dr. Gonzalez on carbon (Aalde et al. 2006a, b, Baker et al. 2010, Gonzalez et al.

2010a). The authors wrote guidelines and laid out equations for methods on scientific selection of

key carbon pools, prevention of double counting, maintaining consistency of time series, and

characterization of uncertainties. In the first three meetings, the Chapter 7 team assessed the

published scientific literature, drafted report text, responded to comments from the global

scientific peer review, and revised the first draft.

IPCC sent the second-order draft to scientists and governments for its second review

from February to April 2013. The IPCC then compiled all the comments into Excel spreadsheets.

During the Manaus meeting, the authors examined each comment, discussed the scientific issues

involved, and decided on the approach for responding to the comment and, if necessary, for

editing the report. For the 63 page second draft of Chapter 7, reviewers submitted 82 chapter-

specific and 57 general comments. By the end of the meeting, the team had reviewed each

comment and assigned the work for each comment to a specific author. The authors need to

complete the final draft by July 31, 2013. IPCC member governments will consider the report for

approval in October 2013. IPCC will publish it afterward and post the pdf files of the report on

the IPCC web site <http://www.ipcc.ch> for any user to download.

U.S. National Parks, Carbon, Wetlands, and the IPCC

Ecosystems can naturally reduce global warming by removing carbon dioxide from the

atmosphere and storing it in biomass, one of many ecosystem services that national parks provide.

In California, measurements of coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) south of Redwood

National Park (Busing and Fujimori 2005) shows that redwood groves contain carbon at the

highest densities in the world (Aalde et al. 2006b), up to ten times the carbon density of tropical

rainforest. Groves of giant sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum) in Sequoia National Park contain

carbon at the second highest density in the U.S. (Blackard et al. 2008).

Wetlands ecosystems can both store and emit substantial amounts of carbon (Mcleod et al.

2011). The National Park Service manages 10 400 km2 of wetlands (3% of the area of the

National Park System, Figure 2, page 10) and 80 000 km2 of land with organic soils (23% of the


area of the National Park System, Figure 3, page 11). The majority of the area of wetlands –

8300 km2 – has organic soils. Together, wetlands and organic soils cover 24% of the area of the

national parks. So, the new IPCC guidelines for wetlands will be applicable to one-quarter of the

national park system. These results come from original spatial analyses of remote sensing-derived

land cover data (North American Land Cover 2005; Canada Centre for Remote Sensing,

Comisión Nacional para el Conocimiento y Uso de la Biodiversidad, Comisión Nacional Forestal,

Insituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía, U.S. Geological Survey,

http://www.cec.org/naatlas) and global soil survey data (Food and Agriculture Organization et al.

2009, Hiederer and Köchy 2011).

Mangrove forests can contain carbon at densities up to four times the carbon density of

upland tropical rainforest (Donato et al. 2011). NPS manages some of these globally important

mangrove forests at Everglades National Park, where NPS scientists and colleagues have

published research that quantifies carbon cycling in wetlands ecosystems (Amiro et al. 2010, Barr

et al. 2010). On the other hand, oxidation of organic matter in wetlands sediments and surface

waters emits carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4), a stronger greenhouse gas. Streams and

rivers in the U.S. alone may emit as much as 100 million tons of carbon per year to the

atmosphere (Butman and Raymond 2011), equivalent to nearly one-tenth the amount of emissions

from global deforestation (Pan et al. 2011).

NPS has used inventories of fossil fuel emissions from vehicles, buildings, and other

infrastructure in the first 18 national parks in the Climate Friendly Parks program (a nonrandom

sample that covers one-tenth of NPS land area and accounts for one-fifth of NPS visitors) and

estimated total emissions equivalent to a U.S. city of 21 000 people (Steuer 2010). Visitor car

driving within parks accounts for two-thirds of estimated emissions.

NPS scientists and partners use IPCC methods to quantify carbon in ecosystems and

carbon emissions from vehicles, buildings, and other infrastructure. A key science objective of

the NPS Climate Change Response Strategy is improving the quantification of ecosystem carbon

storage, which naturally reduces climate change and is a side-benefit of resource management

actions such as forest conservation and wetland habitat restoration. Key mitigation objectives of

the NPS Climate Change Response Strategy are reducing carbon emissions from park operations

and promoting biological carbon storage. Therefore, the IPCC Guidelines on National

Greenhouse Gas Inventories and service of Dr. Gonzalez as an IPCC lead author for the

guidelines advances the NPS mission by contributing to the reduction of climate change and its

impacts on national park resources.


References

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McConkey, S.M. Ogle, K. Paustian, J. Raison, N.H. Ravindranath, D. Schoene, P. Smith,

Z. Somogyi, A. van Amstel, and L. Verchot. 2006a. Generic methods applicable to

multiple land use categories. In Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. National

Greenhouse Gas Inventory Guidelines. Institute for Global Environmental Strategies,

Hayama, Japan.

Aalde, H., P. Gonzalez, M. Gytarsky, T. Krug, W.A. Kurz, S. Ogle, J. Raison, D. Schoene, N.H.

Ravindranath, N.G. Elhassan, L.S. Heath, N. Higuchi, S. Kainja, M. Matsumoto, M.J.S.

Sánchez, and Z. Somogyi. 2006b. Forest Land. In Intergovernmental Panel on Climate

Change. National Greenhouse Gas Inventory Guidelines. Institute for Global

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Davis, A.R. Desai, S. Dore, V. Engel, J.D. Fuentes, A.H. Goldstein, M.L. Goulden, T.E.

Kolb, M.B. Lavigne, B.E. Law, H.A. Margolis, T. Martin, J. H. McCaughey, L. Misson,

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carbon dioxide fluxes after disturbance in forests of North America. Journal of

Geophysical Research 115: G00K02. doi:10.1029/2010JG001390.

Baker, D.J., G. Richards, A. Grainger, P. Gonzalez, S. Brown, R. DeFries, A. Held, J. Kellndorfer,

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2010. Controls on mangrove forest-atmosphere carbon dioxide exchanges in western

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Dube, A. Githeko, M. Githendu, P. Gonzalez, D. Gwary, B. Jallow, J. Nwafor, and R.

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California. Remote Sensing of Environment 114: 1561–1575.

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