Highlights and images for 29 July 2021

On the fourth day, delegates continued their consideration of the Summary for Policymakers of the Working Group I (WG I) contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Two plenary sessions took place during the day, addressing:  

• a box on scenarios, climate models, and projections;
• a subsection on impacts of human-induced climate change;
• a subsection on human influence on the climate system; and
• a subsection on ocean and land carbon sinks.

These elements had each been taken up first in plenary, and subsequently in dedicated author meetings and contact group sessions earlier in the week, before being taken up again in plenary for approval.

This second round of plenary discussions started with the co-facilitators of the different contact groups reporting back on progress in reaching agreement on the paragraphs assigned to them. Building on this, the respective subsections were considered paragraph by paragraph and sentence by sentence, culminating with consideration of the main headline statement of each subsection. Where needed, WG I Co-Chairs Valérie Masson-Delmotte and Panmao Zhai set up so-called “huddles” to foster consensus. These huddles consisted of (virtual) breakout groups among a small group of delegates. Progress made in these huddles was captured in writing and reported back to plenary. Additional contact group sessions were scheduled to advance progress on outstanding elements.

Two contact group sessions also took place during the day, respectively addressing a subsection on global surface temperature increase in the near term and on changes in “climatic impact-drivers,” which are physical climate system conditions that affect an element of society or ecosystems.