A Scientist's Guide to the COP

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Ambition at COP23

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Posted by: Anna McGinn At this COP, we are talking a lot about ambition.  In Will’s most recent post , he explains the Global Stocktake which is one major element of how countries plan to institutionalize and then operationalize increasing ambition on climate action. The World Resources Institute worked with the UNFCCC to create "the arc of ambition" (image below) to chart the path towards net-zero emissions and climate resilience by 2050. You can see the global stocktakes prominently featured within this arc.  So, this arc looks like the UNFCCC and its parties have everything under control, right? So, why is there so much to talk about on ambition here at COP23 outside of this planning for the global stocktake?  To understand this, we have to go back to 2015 when the countries were negotiating the Paris Agreement. Since they did not know when the Agreement would enter into force during the negotiations (because they agreed that it would enter
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The United States at COP23: What to expect?

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US Center at COP22 Marrakech in 2016 featuring one of NASA's climate modeling education tools Posted by: Anna McGinn It has often been complicated to be a US citizen at the UN Climate Change Conferences. The US is responsible for vast historic emissions of greenhouse gases and continues to be one of the leading emitters in the world . Compounding this, the US has not always been interested in stepping up as a leader to curb emissions or chart a new path forward for development. For example, the US never ratified the Kyoto Protocol which is the first agreement established under this UN climate framework to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. Jonathan Purshing, long time US climate negotiator, introduces Sec. John Kerry at COP22 in 2016 Under former President Obama, the US did have some more commendable moments especially when it comes to the formation and passage of the Paris Agreement which is the most recent effort to set global steps toward climate change miti
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Earth Science Feeding the COP

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Posted by: Will Kochtitzky How do we monitor changes to earth? How do we measure the essential climate variables (ECV) to inform decision making? How do we quantify climate change? At the COP, all these questions and more are asked within in the realm of “Research and Systematic Observation”. Because systematic observations play a key role in the UNFCCC processes there are defined mechanisms for parties (countries) to receive information from organizations working to make earth observations, such as the European Space Agency, World Meteorological Organization, among others. These groups are vital in assessing the state of the planet and relaying scientific information to the parties. In these negotiations, the parties also request information from scientific bodies. Many people may not consider these conversations important, as they are not dealing with climate policy and are not impacting global carbon emissions. In fact, these negotiations are the ground work
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