At its 28th session held in Budapest, Hungary, 09-10 April 2008, the IPCC decided to prepare a Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) comprising three Working Group (WG) contributions and a Synthesis Report, with the WGs covering the following areas:

• WGI: The Physical Science Basis;
• WGII: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability;
• WGIII: Mitigation of Climate Change.

As has been the case in the past, the outline of the AR5 was developed through a scoping process involving climate change experts from all relevant disciplines and users of IPCC reports, including representatives from governments. The scoping meeting to define the outline of the AR5 was held in Venice, Italy, 13-17 July 2009. Participants included 186 invited scientific experts in relevant disciplines and selected stakeholders, plus the IPCC Bureau and members of the WG Technical Support Units and the IPCC Secretariat.

The meeting discussed the outlines and structure of the three Working Group reports and the Synthesis Report as well as cross-cutting themes. A draft scoping paper was then circulated to IPCC Focal Points and participating Observer Organizations for comment. The comments were considered by the IPCC Bureau at its 40th Session (Geneva, 18 September 2009) and revised outlines of the three WG contributions were prepared.

The outline of the WGIII contribution to AR5 was approved at the 11th Session of Working Group III and accepted along with the outlines for WGs I and II at the 31st Session of the IPCC meeting in Bali, Indonesia, 26-29 October 2009. At that Session, the Panel also agreed a revised timetable for the AR5, with the completion of WGIII’s contribution scheduled for April 2014.

The complete WGIII AR5 Chapter Outline is available here.

Please refer to the following documents/links for more information about the AR5 Scoping Meeting:

• AR5 Scoping Meeting Documentation
• Participant List
• Report of AR5 Scoping Meeting