Footnotes for the Summary for Policymakers of IPCC Working Group 1

1 Climate change in IPCC usage refers to any change in climate over time, whether due to natural variability or as a result of human activity. This usage differs from that in the Framework Convention on Climate Change, where climate change refers to a change of climate that is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and that is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods.

2 In total 122 Co-ordinating Lead Authors and Lead Authors, 515 Contributing Authors, 21 Review Editors and 420 Expert Reviewers.

3 Delegations of 99 IPCC member countries participated in the Eighth Session of Working Group I in Shanghai on 17 to 20 January 2001.

4 The IPCC Second Assessment Report is referred to in this Summary for Policymakers as the SAR.

5 Generally temperature trends are rounded to the nearest 0.05°C per unit time, the periods often being limited by data availability.

6 In general, a 5% statistical significance level is used, and a 95% confidence level.

7 In this Summary for Policymakers and in the Technical Summary, the following words have been used where appropriate to indicate judgmental estimates of confidence: virtually certain (greater than 99% chance that a result is true); very likely (90-99% chance); likely (66-90% chance); medium likelihood (33-66% chance); unlikely (10-33% chance); very unlikely (1-10% chance); exceptionally unlikely (less than 1% chance). The reader is referred to individual chapters for more details.

8 Radiative forcing is a measure of the influence a factor has in altering the balance of incoming and outgoing energy in the Earth-atmosphere system, and is an index of the importance of the factor as a potential climate change mechanism. It is expressed in Watts per square metre (Wm-2).

9 ppm (parts per million) or ppb (parts per billion, 1 billion = 1,000 million) is the ratio of the number of greenhouse gas molecules to the total number of molecules of dry air. For example: 300 ppm means 300 molecules of a greenhouse gas per million molecules of dry air.

10 Complex physically based climate models are the main tool for projecting future climate change. In order to explore the full range of scenarios, these are complemented by simple climate models calibrated to yield an equivalent response in temperature and sea level to complex climate models. These projections are obtained using a simple climate model whose climate sensitivity and ocean heat uptake are calibrated to each of seven complex climate models. The climate sensitivity used in the simple model ranges from 1.7 to 4.2°C, which is comparable to the commonly accepted range of 1.5 to 4.5°C.

11 This range does not include uncertainties in the modelling of radiative forcing, e.g. aerosol forcing uncertainties. A small carbon-cycle climate feedback is included.

12 Heat index: A combination of temperature and humidity that measures effects on human comfort.

Source & © IPCC TAR SPM of WG1

Related publication: