 Okay, yeah, I think it's time to begin the webinar. Thank you for joining us. My name is Simon Clark. I am the committee program coordinator here at the EGU. And today we'll be discussing IPCC at COP26. We'll be looking at science, its role in policy and decision making, and what that means for the future, but also what that means for science, collaboration. To talk of me on the subject, we have Dr Sarah Connors, who is head of science at working group one of IPCC. Sarah, would you like to introduce yourself? Yeah, sure. Hi, Simon. Hi, everyone. Nice to be here. Thank you for the invitation. Yeah, so my name is Sarah Connors. I'm the head of the science team at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, the working group one branch of that, and I am the head of science in the technical unit there. So I guess that means that I work kind of in the science policy interface. And my background, did you ask about my background? I can tell you about my background if you want. Oh yeah, please tell me a bit about your background. Sure. My background is, well, it's got a background in atmospheric science. I was trained as a chemist and then went into a PhD in estimating methane emissions, but then I left academia and started looking at science policy. And I was actually a science policy fellow at the EGU before doing my job at the IPCC. Can I ask you what motivated you to shift from pure academia into more policy-oriented work? That's a good question. I think I really liked trying to find the more actionable side of research. I really loved research, but I didn't see it as something that I wanted to do, like really the details of research for the entire of my career. So I wanted to try and do something that's a little bit more applied. And so, yeah, I liked that sort of bridge between looking at what influences policy and how much science is taken into consideration. And then, yeah, just by chance, the job at the IPCC was advertised, so I decided to give it a go. And yeah, five years later, I'm still doing it, so it's going okay. Five years later, you are head of science. So as head of science of Working Group One, could you tell us more about what Working Group One does, especially like the broad structure of the IPCC, there's more working groups, what do you focus on? Yeah, it's a bit of a complicated structure and process with the IPCC. So it's an international organisation at the global level. And it's sort of structured into different, primarily, there's three working groups, different working groups, and they have this different focus to look at different aspects of climate change. Working Group One is more about the physical climate science aspect. So what is causing global warming? How is the world changing and responding because of the emissions that we're putting into the atmosphere? And so it looks at a lot of the physical changes that are associated with climate change. That's Working Group One. And then there's Working Group Two and Work Group Three. When Group Two is more about the adaptation side of what you need to do to adapt to the changes we're seeing from climate change, but also on the impacts as well. And so that might assess things due with how vulnerable or the exposure there is for different people, different ecosystems, different regions. So that's really their mandate to look at the impacts and the adaptation side. And then Working Group Three is the mitigation side. So that's more about what would need to happen or what are the different options of what could happen in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to limit the effects of climate change. And there's various other bits in the IPCC as well, but that's like the three main working groups that produce these huge reports. So Working Group One really focuses on the physical science basis of the report. And so the Sixth Assessment Report was published last August. And it's the latest in a series of updates on the scientific consensus of climate change that's been ongoing since 1990. Yeah, the latest report was 1990. Yeah. So the media headlines painted, I think I've had to say, a quite gloomy picture of the future. But I know quite a few climate scientists also stress that this report wasn't about hope of solutions as well. I was wondering if you could just share about the key messages that came off the recent report was over. Definitely. So actually, before I start, I'll just put in a couple of links into the chat because then people can have a look themselves. But this link is just to the general IPCC report website. So you can have a look at what the report covers in its summary and its chapters and all that kind of like it's basically all the details as well as the high level statements as well. And then the second link I'm putting in is a link to what we call as the Interactive Atlas. So this is a website where you can discover how climate changes are happening on the regional levels. You can look at your region and see what's changing or what is projected to change in the future. And so yeah, with those links, you can kind of explore yourselves. But on the high level side of this report, it was released in August. And yeah, because we don't look at the adaptation and mitigation aspects of climate change, we don't have the mandate to talk too much about the solutions. So I can understand why it could have been seen as quite doom and gloom. But that's because the next steps of the story will be coming out with the working group two and three reports, and they're going to be released hopefully early next year. So hopefully we can build on the story that working group one has started later on earlier next year. But in terms of our report, the main messages we had were, well, I guess from in terms of where we are now, we've known for decades that the world is warming. That's been reported for for decades. And now it's the first time that the IPCC has said it's undeniably due to human influence. I think the last report in 2013 said it's like 95% sure, like virtually certain that it's humans. Now we're like, yeah, it's a statement of fact. And the changes that we're seeing on the long term context are really rapid. They're widespread. It's not just, you know, temperatures are going up, we're seeing changes in all aspects of the climate system, you know, like the biosphere, the atmosphere, the cryosphere, the oceans that we're seeing changes everywhere there. And it seems to be well, no, it is, it is intensifying like this, this climate change seems to be getting more and more intense. And some aspects seem to be accelerating like sea level rise. There's a, there's, there's proof that this, this seems to be, this is accelerating in the recent past. And some of these exchange, some of these results are unprecedented in like thousands of years. CO2 hasn't been this high for two million years. And some of the projected changes that we look at in the future could mean that the temperatures of the world could go up to levels that we haven't, the earth hasn't seen for like 20 to 50 million years. So it's really going into like uncharted territories. So I can understand why people might have thought this is a bit of a wake up call report. In terms of the changes we're seeing, they're happening not only in every aspect of the climate system, you're also seeing it in every region of the world. It's not like you can say this region is escaping the impacts, it's all the effects on the changes. We can find human-attributed changes everywhere. And these changes will be increasing as further warming continues. And one of the worst things, like one of the saddest points from the high, from the results for me was that a lot of this is, it's, it's basically it's irreversible. Like we can, we can stabilise temperatures, but we, it's really hard to, for many aspects of the climate system to really bring it back to what it was before. So yeah, there's sort of like an incentive to, if you would like to reduce the further change that's going to happen, then the incentive for that would be to implement like rapid emission reductions. And if, if that doesn't happen, then the, the long term like Paris Agreement goals of trying to get as close to 1.5 as possible or two degrees, even two degrees are kind of going to be on beyond our limit if we don't act now. That's paraphrasing a bit, but yeah, that's kind of like the high, the high level messages. So the key takeaway is firstly, this report is part of a bigger story as the other working groups publish their own reports. But at the same time, it's post a picture of an intensified climate system, which results in acceleration in some places. And historical emissions have already cemented future warming. So really focus to a certain extent. Yeah. So the key focus now is really reducing and stopping how much extra carbon were invested into the atmosphere and into that system. Yeah. So I think that kind of segues nicely into the other, the other theme of this webinar, which is COP26. So that's the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, or the Conference of Parties, hence COP. It's been delayed since 2019 due to COVID-19 pandemic. So there's a lot of buildup and anticipation to this particular meeting. I think that's also true, especially since it's hot on the heels of the Sixth Assessment Report. I was wondering if you could tell us what you think the key themes this year's COP would be? Yeah, that's a good question. So with the Conference of the Parties, it runs for about two weeks. And there are regular events that have been going on since, I think, the UNFCCC, the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change, that was set up in a sort of global effort to try and act on climate change. And so these COPs have been regularly occurring for years on that. The most famous recent one was the COP21 that was held in Paris, and that's where the Paris Agreement comes from. And so in the Paris Agreement, there's this long-term goal of trying to reduce to, or trying to make sure global warming is limited to 1.5 degrees or well below 2 degrees. But within that, they have what they're called nationally determined contributions from countries where they say what they can contribute in their efforts to tackling climate change. And so the next stage in that sort of long-term COP process is there's going to be a big global stocktake of where we are at and what are people's, what are countries' actions going on. And I think that's scheduled 2023. And so in the meantime, these COPs are trying to increase the commitment from countries and further like motivate and increase these incremental commitments that the countries are trying to to do. And so that's the bigger overall focus, but then there are certain themes that happen almost every day that will give a particular area of climate change or areas related to climate change focus. And so the first couple of days is normally when the world leaders come together and it's like the big more headline-hitting speeches occur. But then on day three, it's the day is focused on finance, day four is focused on energy. And so there's different themes that you see across the conference and the two weeks around it. It's not to say that there will only be talks focusing on finance on day three, sorry, it will be, it will, it can still be very broad. But yeah, those are like the known themes in advance that occur in COP. So basically this COP is giving it the opportunity to visit the Paris Agreement, I think since COP 21, as you said. Yeah, it's always like an ongoing process, like they're always, they're always working on further discussions of what can be done and how can action be facilitated, what action needs to be done. So it's always, every COP is always discussing these things, it's kind of ongoing. And then how close can you be to being able to get another agreement? That's something that's always something that a COP would hope to do, but it doesn't necessarily mean it will always happen. So there's a sort of uncertainty there of whether there would be an agreement in this COP or whether it might end up being in the next COP. Yeah, because that's what happened with the previous COP as well, I think, is where there was a, they pushed back agreeing on some of the terms I think related to climate finance, which I think is also lots of anticipation towards this COP as well as whether they all reached an agreement or not. And there's also, I can't actually remember what it's called, but there's a sort of complementary meeting that happens halfway through the year where there's more discussions that go on, it's just that's more background, more technical discussions and then that preparation can then lead in to help with some of the discussions in COPs as well. So it's actually quite a continuous process, people think of it as like this one big meeting once a year, but there is a lot of work in the background I think from many different stakeholders. Sure, so I guess COP is really bitter of an iceberg for the greater discussions and I suppose impacts that happen in the ongoing discussions around response to climate change. Speaking of inputs, with the release of the sixth assessment report back in August, how much do you think that's shaped discussions at the COP this year? Yeah, so I wouldn't say that COP is shaped by the IPCC reports, but what I would say is that there is room for IPCC findings to be incorporated within the meeting. If I think more about the history of the IPCC reports, they have always provided scientific evidence and understanding for relatively international policy context. So the first assessment report which you said came out in 1990, that helped establish evidence to show that the UNFCCC should be created to help track all, to see what the world should do with climate change. And then the second assessment report that helped lead and give information towards the Kyoto Protocol, which was signed in the mid 90s and that was like looking at different warming gases and really reducing those like I think it was six key greenhouse gases. And so yeah, and then of course the most the more recent one, the AR5 went in to help give evidence for the Paris Agreement. So AR6 is hoping to give evidence to these discussions leading up to the global stock take. So there's always interest to learn about what's going on with the IPCCs, but if the reports have come out. This cycle which has been going on for about I don't know five, six years already, we've already had three special reports that have come out. So there's been presentations about special reports in previous COPs. And yeah, so there's this, there seems to be like this willingness to listen and incorporate it, but I wouldn't say that it shapes the meeting. The meeting itself is bigger than that. It's like this huge version of EGU, basically where everything is going on. So, but there's certainly a scientific presence in what IPCC brings to COP, especially with the reporting on 1.5 degree warming that came out a few years ago as well. Yeah, and I should probably say like it's not just IPCC that like can provide evidence, there's so many different organisations that will have different reports and findings and you know that the science is actually incorporated in many different areas, but the IPCC is kind of in this privileged position where there's quite a few like high level events where there will be talks and stuff. So it's maybe slightly more seen, I don't know, I don't know. That's 100% accurate. So I think the report definitely lends a greater visibility than to what the science about IPCC puts out. So with all these ongoing discussions and from your perspective as someone who leaves within the IPCC, what do you think the ideal outcome of COP26 would be? Yeah, so I guess well the ideal outcome is kind of what I mentioned earlier is that they would like this new like ramped up ambitious agreement that's been agreed across all countries. So as I was trying to allude to before, it doesn't necessarily mean that it will happen at this COP, it might happen at the next COP, but this is the focus that they're trying to get like an agreement across all countries to show further commitment to help limit within the world, to help keep the goals of the Paris Agreement attainable. I think there's a lot of discussion, I think especially in some of the Western press, like this is the last chance to save the world. I've seen that a few times. I'm not actually sure how helpful that really is because although I think time is always of an origin, it would be better to act sooner rather than later, but it's not. I think this binary approach of all or nothing can be maybe a little bit give a misunderstanding because if unfortunately they're not able to make an agreement, that doesn't mean that it can't still happen. So I was trying to think of like a good analogy for this coming up and I was thinking like, you know, if you're on a bus and you miss your stop, it's not like, oh, I guess I'm just going to go to the terminal now, then like, no, you just you try and get off at the next stop, right? So I'm trying to think that there is another chance to be able to to still keep working and acting on climate, but that comes at a cost of time. So you've got to then accept there'll be further impacts and implications for that delayed action, if that makes sense. Yeah, I think the way I was I was thinking about it when you're giving up personality is so to meet the Paris Agreement, CO2 emissions will have to fall globally by I think about 45% by 2030. And if we miss the bus this year on getting agreements and affirmations that that will be met, then we still might get that agreement in a few next year or three years, but those costs will be higher because the slope in terms of reduces emissions will probably be steeper. I think that's yeah, there's a clear like this. This isn't from our report because we don't go into like the mitigation aspects of climate change, but something that's quite clear from the special report on 1.5 is that if you delay action now, you have to do more to be able to achieve your goals later on, and that can be more costly. And as you know, there's always a certain point where you may you may, if you delay it too much, you won't be able to reach 1.5, right? But that doesn't mean like the world, that doesn't mean that people should give up. And I worry that like this binary narrative can sometimes have that effect on people that are listening. So you should still keep working. But yeah, like with every delayed action, there's going to be implications for that. Yeah, I guess the worry is that it might, playing on people's, I suppose, climate anxiety might induce some kind of paralysis when really it's something that needs to be constantly worked on in terms of trying to achieve these goals. Yeah, I mean, there's a whole research area and like the psychology of change in climate and climate science, which is not anywhere near my background. It's super fascinating, though. Yeah, it does remind me of how the media sometimes talk about warming targets such as 1.5 degrees almost as cliff edges, like if we go beyond that, it's we're giving off a cliff edge when actually it's a long slope and sure it will be absolutely worse depending on your local geography. I think there was a report in 2019 from the UN that said the burden of climate change will be far worse in nations are all are incoming and tropical of 1.5 degrees. So yeah, sure, like if we meet 1.5 degrees, the intensification will happen will be worse. But there was people, but it's not a sudden increase in hurricanes. That's a very gradual thing and the slower we can do that. Yeah, yeah, that's a key message from our report as well. It's like, well, it backs up the 1.5 report where you kind of show that every like increment of warming, it really does matter. You will see increased effects as warming increases. But I think that it's not like my personal view is that doesn't mean it's an all or nothing. Like if you miss, if you miss one goal, it doesn't mean you give up. But yeah, anyway, that's maybe that's more of a philosophical discussion. So can we cycle back a bit and talk about the presence of the IPCC at COP? So like what capacity does the advocacy have when it's there? Is it as a way just to kind of provide knowledge like perhaps presentations or is it there to perhaps even advocate for solutions or is it modern mutual body? Like how does it interact with COP? Yeah, so well, the structure of the structure of COP, I don't know, I think it might be helpful to just explain like my very basic understanding of what goes on in COP is there are like two main areas. You have like this, this blue area, which is like more for the governmental aspects and the delegations. And then there's a green zone as well, like the blue zone and the green zone. That's kind of how things are discussed. And the green zone is more about civil societies and groups. And so there's many, there's just so much going on in between these two different zones. Like different organisations will have like pavilions and they'll be giving talks or they'll be doing special panel discussions. That's going on across all of them loosely based around the fact that the blue zone is more governmental and the green zone is more civil society. And so the IPCC, we have what we call a pavilion in the blue zone. And we share this with the world, a mutual logical organisation. And because it's in the UK this time, we're also sharing it with the UK Met Office. And so this, we've got like a whole host of different talks and sessions on different themes that are planned across the two weeks. And this is purely just for our pavilion. And then you might get other like country pavilions that are doing very similar, like doing similar kind of sessions, but on different topics. So I can put in an example in the chat. Where is it? So I think this is just for those following, this is showing like the schedule for the IPCC pavilion. And then the UN FTCC website will have a website somewhere that collects all the schedules of all the different pavilions that are going on. So there's loads of like different outreach and people can join and listen to whatever they want. So not all sessions are open to the public, but many sessions are live streamed. So if people want to listen to some of these, you probably can. But some are access only. And so that would only be for people who have like badges to be able to either virtually attend or attend in person because it's a hybrid meeting this time. And then in terms of the IPCC, we, so we have this pavilion and some of our authors are also going and some of our bureau members, so members of our scientific steering committee, they're going, they're going to be giving like many talks and many different instances. And then there are these like official, they're called official side events that happen in cops. These are like more high level events. And the another acronym is there's a, there's an organization called Subster, which is the, I wrote it down, the subsidiary body for science and technological advice. And they do an official event where they invite the IPCC co-chairs to give a presentation on the latest IPCC report if there has been one. And so there's going to be a official side event, Subster meeting where the working group one report will be discussed in detail. It's a three hour session. So you can get into the nitty gritty results and many governments will be attending and will be able to ask questions. And it's a really nice opportunity for explanations of like why we know these things or how we know these things. And yeah, it's a nice interaction between policymakers and negotiators and scientists as well. Yeah, so the IPCC is much more about providing opportunity for, for example, policymakers to engage with the science and ask questions. So when it comes to communicating to policymakers, are there any key steps or I suppose points you take to make sure they understand? Because communicating with say a policymaker or decision makers can be different than you say it would present to an academic audience or perhaps the public. Yeah, that's a good question. So this is like a bit of a unique experience from the IPCC standpoint is that the whole process is not just scientists writing the report, the process itself is supposed to be very integrated at the interface of science and policy. So the reports are always, they're always framed as policy relevant, but not prescriptive. It never says what people should definitely be doing or there's always options out there, but we try and frame the science in a policy relevant way that then scientists then policymakers can take and use when they're designing their policies. Like the process itself is we agree with governments that make up the IPCC to produce a report. The outline of that report is scoped by a big group of experts from across the world and that outline is approved by the IPCC panel, which is the 195 countries that make up the IPCC. And similarly when the reports drafted it goes out for review and the reviewers will be experts from all over the world in climate science, but it will also be policymakers and government and delegations who will also incorporate their experts from their countries to help review as well. So the review is also like with a policy focus as well. So I think the framing of the summary is known as a summary for policymakers, it's always tried to be framed for that particular audience. So that might be why sometimes people would read it and be like well this is quite in some ways this is quite technical and this can be because some policymakers really want to know about the technicalities of the carbon budget for example. And so that's why it's sort of framed in that particular way. But yeah discussing and communicating with other audiences you would probably want to do a different framing in how you communicate those messages. The way I explained the messages in the earlier you wouldn't be able to, I think that's a very different way of framing them, what's written in the summary for policymakers if that makes sense. But yeah maybe people can give me feedback of whether that was okay communicated or not. So another theme really when it comes to the IPCC communicating with colleagues, it comes out it's really that it seems to be science inferencing policymakers. But is there a, is there like an inverse relationship as well do you think where like what happens at company six will also impact scientists perhaps in terms of perhaps some of the scientists might care about what's happening in these policy regions outside of academia or how science should be communicated. Can we just talk about it? Yeah I think so yeah you do you always hear like the phrase science for policy which is about this is going broader than the IPCC now it's actually drawing more on my like EGU days. But you have this concept of science for science for policy where you're providing evidence to help make policy decisions or inform policy decisions. You can also get policies for science where you want to know more about specific research areas and there might be different grants available for a particular area that you're looking into I mean like a classic example is when COVID hit suddenly loads of policies changed and research changed and we wanted to have more and more information about COVID. So there's there is like a different way of of interacting but in terms of I guess going into to COP that it's not always like scientists are just there to explain what they they know I mean that's obviously really valuable to have that interface and discussion and the platform there but it can also be a really eye-opening experience for the scientists themselves because they can see their like you know their areas of research or areas that interest them being discussed and probably you know very different framing to what they've been used to so it can be quite a yeah like a a useful way to to to see your research in a different light. So one of the things for me I don't know maybe I'm talking too much but this is just an example that when I when I came to the IPCC when you're modelling climate futures with the projections you there are what we call these modelling scenarios and there's this huge broad range of modelling scenarios and very so they they go but in the report we have about five core scenarios that go from roughly 1.5 degrees level warming up to it can be anywhere around four degrees but it has a lot more and it's yeah it's it's much higher and from a science point of view from a physical like research point of view it's really interesting to use the highest scenario because you in a theoretical world you you pump in loads of CO2 and you can see how the climate responds and so you get this huge signal to noise ratio and you can see are these things are definitely changing you can see these impacts of climate change but from a policy makers point of view they kind of want to know about the lowest scenarios because that's that's 1.5 and 2 degrees they want to know like well what's the world going to be like there so that's much more their focus and their priority and so you can really I think it's quite eye-opening to to see that like different priorities from different different users um yeah sorry if that was a bit too long no basically one of the reasons to really care about what happens at the science policy interface from a scientific perspective is really to kind of understand how to give your science that great utility basically it's not just doing science for science sake it's doing science to make sure it has a real-world impact and that's something that can be gleaned from from engaging at the interface. Speaking of engagement um how can say a scientist get involved at this interface and can they also perhaps get involved in the IPCC as well? Yeah so I've just realized I keep answering the questions with yeah so need to think of a different way to respond to questions um for the for the COP I think registration has now ended but you you can always check like if your institution has observer status because many many organizations have applied and usually get observer status so you can be able to see some of the events that are not live streamed um so you can see some of the things that are behind closed doors equally there's loads of things that are live streamed so you can you can still follow follow COP in in that sense even if you haven't been able to to register and get that access um and of course in the with the COP there's going to be so much reporting going on about it you can you can follow the discussions through organizations like I think the carbon brief in the space in the UK they would probably do quite a lot of updates and there's another actually I'll post the link in um I don't it's another acronym I don't know what it stands for IISD um they have this um earth negotiations bulletin and um they'll give updates on what's going on in different sessions of COP they also do updates on what goes on in the IPCC plenary so you can always find out like which country said what and and information about that when uh when it's going on so you can follow COP through that way um and then in terms of getting involved with the IPCC you can do it uh like both directly and indirectly like the the if you're if you're a researcher right in the indirect way of doing this is is just through your own publications like if you're if you're public if you're um publishing in relevant areas then just having those publications out in um that can be read and assessed by IPCC authors that's already contributing to to this this effort um and you know the IPCC wouldn't be what it is without having this literature that it can it can read and it can assess um and also if you're interested in research areas there's um ends there's um at the end of every chapter of the IPCC report there are like these um like sort of concluding remarks which can talk about some of the things we couldn't assess because we didn't have enough available literature or it wasn't it's a new sort of potential area for research so if people are interested in finding out new research areas then um I would actually recommend going to having a read of some of the IPCC chapters um and yeah and the other ways that get involved is is to try and apply to be an author for the next cycle that won't be until about 2023 when ar7 starts so it's it's not happening now but you can apply to be an author or you can apply to be um uh a member of the steering committee in the bureaus that's uh through an election through different governments but there's there's information on how to do that on our reports and finally I think the only other way you could get involved is if you wanted to be an expert reviewer of the draft so when a draft goes out for review you can sign up and and read read the drafts like before they get released and and offer offer comments there but again that won't be until the next cycle because we're we're coming towards the end um so in terms of engaging with the IPCC um there's there's a way to get involved um at multiple steps from offering to using your expertise to review the actual to show when it's produced um but of course that's time dependent so it'll be probably about two years or so before I start doing uh putting out calls for that kind of contribution yeah yeah unfortunately the the chance to review drafts that is is basically over now because the drafts have already done they go through to round to review already over over years but um that's just just on the timeline that we're in um and it's also depending on your own commitment like reviewing the report is is nice because you can when it's available you can you know just review a chapter you have to read everything or you can just read a section you know it's whatever you want to and what you have time for if you sign up for being an author it's this fantastic experience but it's a huge commitment so it really depends on what you want to what you want to give as well um so uh before we move on to uh some audience questions uh just kind of one final uh question for me is like is a key or takeaway message about um I suppose communicating out in the science as far as the interface about the audience could take away from today or engaging with that interface um well I think it's just a really I found it a really interesting experience where you can I guess what I was saying before that you see how your your research can be framed differently and it's it's just a different way of thinking about basically the same topic it's just coming from different different points of view um but yeah I I don't really know what else to say I think it's just a fun it's really nice I really enjoy getting into it some people might find it a little bit um uh frustrating because you might want to frame your your argument or your your your your purpose or your point um and you then you're discussing with maybe a policymaker you realize that there's many other aspects that they have to they have to take into consideration so it can just be like a a learning curve for both parties the scientists and the policymaker like learning each other's priorities and and having that dialogue it's it's very rewarding I think so and enlightening yet challenging um approach to going from beyond science but also appreciating um the impacts um of the science so we'll go into um we'll go into uh audience questions now I've had some sense in before this webinar and some that were given lives um the first one was just asking about uh the global stop take so the global assessment it's like what what is that um do you know about how that works and I wonder if you could speak to that at all I can't I can't go into detail it's not it's really not my expertise but um I know that it's it's uh yeah I think I'd have to try and find some other resources to point point them to but it's it's it's all about it's not just about country commitment it's also about um huge areas of like what it's not just like um what what current actions are going on it's also like what impacts have happened um where are we now in terms of the changes that we're seeing now and and if we want to go towards um you know 1.5 or under 2 well under well below 2 degrees how do we how do we get there and so it can talk about climate finance it can be talking about um impacts and damage it can be talking about enabling conditions it goes into huge huge areas and so um yeah I'm not I'm not sure I'm the best person to really explain the details of of of that um and I hope we'll understand it more and more as it develops as well going forward so so it's more of an a the assessment of um or a detailed look at how progress is is happening and of things online to be achieved in terms of the power screen and in search yes there was a um in one of the previous cops I forgot on which one it was there they had this dialogue that was set up between many different countries and stakeholders which is called the Tanalo dialogue and I think it was developed by Fiji the government of Fiji that wants to do this and it was like the where are we now um where do we want to go and how do we get there and so it's all this sort of structuring of of that information to try and build further um commitment actions to to getting to where they want to they want to go so that was like one of the the intermediate the intermediary steps uh along this long long process um going towards the global stock take but yeah so that's not exactly on the global stock take itself though sorry but again um it's one of those things that's not just one acute event it's something that's having to build off um a lot of work yeah going previously yeah um so I suppose people looking to get involved in this interface again need to think about it's it's not just carpets beyond cops they need to keep an eye out for whatever processes are going on that do contribute to a whole um process yeah um I I got a question I think this is more logistical so I'm not sure um this is in front of me mean it but um in terms of you mentioned the cop having live streams do you know if they will have like webinars as well but open to people I I can speak more for like the IPCC pavilion that I know that all of our client sessions they will be they will be live streamed so I think if you follow any of the social media of the IPCC you'll be able to get access to uh whatever's being whatever's being live streamed and that that link I sent about the the pavilion will have the schedule um I don't know about the other sessions like I think they will have some session because it's hybrid as well um there will be a lot of events I think that will be live streamed but it's just accessing that information is still a bit difficult so I I have this I found a web link from the last cop where they did this sort of overview of what's going on in each each session so I'm assuming on this website there will be a very similar one for cop cop 26 I just at the moment I haven't found it so um if people are interested I think I would try and look on the UNF triple C website and and see what's what's available there sure um so there's definitely live streams and there's a hybrid event I'd also expect there to be um the capacity for online questions as well it depends I yeah I don't know about the online yeah some for sure but maybe not blanket for everything yeah of course um so another uh question is uh do you have any tips for people who might be attending cop especially for the first time it's a bit like when you go to edu for the first time and you have that kind of like overwhelmed like oh my goodness there's so much going on um and I guess I mean I would just try and find um I would take a bit of time beforehand try and find the schedules see like a few sessions that you know you really want to try and put into your diary and like make sure you don't miss it but um particularly like the I think it's the green zone with the civil societies they have like loads of different advocacy groups there's like charities they do loads of interesting things going on so I would just like if you're physically going just wander around and see what's there I remember when I went to the the cop that was after it was in Poland for one after 1.5 and um I was going into like the the blue zone and there were people dressed up in like as angry birds and giving out like vegan food and it was just like it kind of had us all in this festival feel so it's it's a really cool environment actually so I hope it's going to be um similar like uh for this one as well um so I guess uh the takeaway from that is map out and have a plan but don't over plan leave time to just soak in atmosphere and take breaks definitely get your priorities like find those the sessions that you'd be really interested in but um yeah just just see what else is out there because it's huge and it's fun to explore um so I just think we have a question I received um one is asking like how much do you think science is a factor in these type of discussions going on at COP26 you actually mentioned previously um how policymakers have lots of different factors to care about and not just science I was wondering if you could perhaps speak a bit more on that at all yeah I mean that can be that's more of a broader context I think when you've got the cop environment the the policymakers there are really focused on on the climate change issue um they obviously it depends on like the the topic of initial discussion but my experience with the at least with the IPCC as well is that many of these policymakers are really informed and they will have very like prestigious experts to help and come and help understand the sciences as well so it's it's almost reassuring to know how much they they value the the science and they want to bring it in and they they want to make sure that the the negotiations that will end up being like legal texts that's internationally adopted they want to make sure that's based on the best available information so in the COP environment I think that that is something that is is is discussed a lot a lot in um in some of these these discussions here um sure um a few other questions I have which again talk about um how to engage with IPCC but one of them is asking you more about what to do if you're not exactly like a senior level scientist or perhaps someone who's not wanting to um stay within academia um and maybe this actually is more speaking towards your own career experience as well as how do you take those first few steps if you're like a scientist into the um world of science or policy or working at the interface yeah so the first point of actually getting involved with the IPCC just because you're an early career scientist doesn't mean you can't be involved like it's very unlikely that you'll be selected as an author but we've had um we organized group reviews of early career scientists to review our reports this cycle um and it was really it was really nice to like have this this network that you would you would create and and you know some of them reviewed the reports together sometimes you had like your own set sort of section that you had to review um and it's like this nice little taster way to get involved with the IPCC without having to do too much commitment or it feeling too overwhelming um so yeah early career scientists have have been involved with the IPCC um this cycle and and in the past um and then what was the other part of the question it was like uh in terms of careers yeah just speaking on how best you start to get involved in um work out the science policy interface uh the question from is from the perspective of someone who wants to um step out of academia but I think it could also be quite broadly for people who are more totally interested as well yeah I guess uh from in my for my own personal way of doing it was to do an internship like I was I was kind of interested in the science policy and like um I didn't really know exactly what that meant so I applied to do an internship and it was it was based in the UK I know several countries and organizations will do these kinds of internships I think there used to be someone on the EGU website there used to be a list of like this I don't know if that's still there but maybe if if it is still there we could put it in like the link of the recording or something but um yeah so if you're if you're interested I think and and your and an internship is available I think that's a really nice way of getting a bit of um a a taster and if you if you're interested in science but still you don't you don't think of career and research is for you there are so many different other like options for still being involved with science just just not in the academic research way that you can go and work for um you can be an expert in in um like the civil service for example there's many different um private sector companies that that do um either research or or to take information from research to help um well there's so many different applications so um oh there the link does still exist that's nice um yeah so it's not I think maybe my my misunderstanding when I started my phd was that um you know it's it's research and academia or nothing and that's that's really not the case um and science policy is is just one avenue that you could go into so I'd recommend if you're if you're early career I'd recommend trying to get an internship just to taste it um as a first step sure so really just keep an eye out for um what programs or offering um I suppose short term exposure to policy for science experts sure um before I wrap up the webinar can I just quickly ask as well how do um early career scientists then engage with the IPCC will there be a call as well especially for ECS people or is it something they'd have to go and look for on a platform themselves so again it will probably be next cycle um but this cycle will at least um we had like youth organizations youth like early career scientists organizations that would do would do calls themselves so the I don't know the uh they're called Apex like a group of polar early career scientists they did a call for doing a group review um then also the the yes YESS which is like Young Earth Science Association they also organized like a group review through their their channels um so it's more like uh early career science organizations doing it themselves and then the IPCC has helped with trying to give webinars on on what makes a good review and and things like this so it's more if if if groups of scientists are interested it's more of a self self organization kind of thing but it's very welcome on our side if that makes sense so um if you're interested and you can't really find opportunities you can create these opportunities yourself um essentially by organizing with like-minded people um and I guess they would contact the IPCC then yeah yeah be very welcome to I think in terms of like knowing when to do it the IPCC will do like announcements of this is going up for review um we're calling for reviewers um and then you would know when that would happen and then you could contact us be like we want to do a review we want to do a group review um and we can help organize that sure that sounds good um we're just about out of time so I think it's time to end the webinar now um thank you so much Sarah for um spending your time with us and giving up all that detail um thank you uh all attendees as well for joining us today um this recording will work on our uh YouTube channel in about a week's time so keep a lookout for that if you want to be watching otherwise I'll end here and say uh thank you again very much Sarah thanks for having me thanks everyone have a good day sure bye bye