UN set to appoint new head of climate science
The United Nations’ new top climate science official will be announced this week, with six candidates in the running to become head of the IPCC
The United Nations’ new top climate science official will be announced this week, with six candidates in the running to become head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Leading scientists from Austria, Belgium, Sierra Leone, South Korea, Switzerland and the United States are in the frame to become the chair of the UN’s climate science agency in a vote due on Tuesday at an IPCC meeting in Croatia.
Governments will choose a successor to Rajendra Pachauri of India, who ended his 13 year tenure in February.
Sierra Leone's Ogunlade Davidson, a former IPCC vice-chair, joined the race in recent weeks and other candidates include Chris Field of Stanford University and expert in the impacts of warming and Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, an IPCC vice-chair from Belgium.
The IPCC has found that if the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is doubled it will drive temperatures up by up to 4.5°C which would have cause catastrophic impacts of climate change.
The 197 UN member states are meeting for the crucial UN Climate Change Conference in Paris from 30 November to 11 December with the aim of reaching a historic climate deal to prevent an average global temperature increase of 2°C above pre-industrial times.
Other candidates to lead the IPCC include Thomas Stocker of Switzerland, who helped create the last IPCC report, Nebojsa Nakicenovic, an IPCC veteran nominated by Austria and Montenegro, and Hoesung Lee of South Korea, another IPCC vice-chair.
The post of IPCC chair runs for 6-8 years and the new incumbent will oversee a new report on climate change after a series in 2013-14 found that it was at least 95 per cent probable that global warming is mainly being caused by human activity.