20 February 2015
The Federal Council has decided to nominate Oeschger Centre member Thomas Stocker from the University of Bern as a candidate for Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The term of the current present, Rajendra Pachauri, is drawing to a close. In October 2015, the members of the IPCC will elect his successor.
The United Nations’ expert group on climate change (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC) was established in 1988. It regularly compiles reports on the latest scientific, technical and socio-economic information in connection with climate change and the options for managing it. The IPCC published its fifth assessment report in October 2014.
Since 2008, Professor Thomas Stocker has acted as co-chair of the working group for the scientific basis of the IPCC, one of three working groups that prepares the panel’s reports. In addition, Professor Stocker heads the Climate and Environmental Physics Department of the Physics Institute at the University of Bern. He is a member of the Oeschger Centre.
The candidates for the IPCC Chair must be nominated by the individual member countries. However, the president is elected on personal merit and not as a representative of a particular country. The candidates must be announced six months before the election, which will take place at the 42nd session of the IPCC in Dubrovnik, Croatia, from October 6-10, 2015.
Source: Federal Council/Environment Department
