Meet an IPCC Expert
Valérie Masson-Delmotte, Senior Scientist at the Climate and Environmental Sciences Laboratory in Gif-sur-Yvette, France, was the coordinating lead author of a chapter in the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) published by the .
"The report is written for the decision-makers in the different countries' governments. It is also intended for industry — and for everyone else, anyone who is curious about the subject."
Valérie Masson-Delmotte, Senior Scientist, Climate and Environmental Sciences Laboratory
Comprised of more than 800 experts from around the world, the IPCC combs through thousands of scientific studies and publishes three-part reports that set out current knowledge (AR5 was published in 2013-2014 and the one before in 2007). The reports aim to provide relevant scientific data to help the world's decision-makers craft climate policies; they are not intended to "prescribe" policy. The IPCC constantly stresses this point: its reports are "policy-relevant, NOT policy-prescriptive."
IPCC's reports detail scenarios. It is up to policy-makers to make decisions.
The most recent one lays out four scenarios addressing rises in average global temperature of between 0.3° C and 4.8° C for the period 2081-2100, using the 1986-2005 average as a baseline. World leaders at the Copenhagen Summit settled on 2° C as the maximum acceptable increase.
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