First Meeting of the Climate Change Science Product Development Advisory Committee (CPDAC)

Summary

Newly formed Department of Energy (DOE) Federal Advisory Committee has been established to prepare two Synthesis and Assessment Products (SAP) for DOE. Once prepared and approved for public release, the products will be deemed highly influential scientific assessments. The products are to be prepared in accordance with the interagency Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) Guidelines for producing such products. The Committee referred to as the Climate Change Science Product Development Advisory Committee (CPDAC) will hold its first meeting Aug 17-18 at the American Geophysical Union in Washington, DC. The Chair and Vice-Chair of the Committee, respectively is Dr. Robert White of the Washington Advisory Group and Dr. Soroosh Sorooshian from University of California Irvine. The first SAP (2.1) will consist of two separate reports, one of which is to provide updated scenarios of greenhouse gas emissions and concentrations. It will also include a summary of the scenarios for interested non-specialists, documentation and discussion of the scenarios, and information about the integrated assessment models used to generate the scenarios. The second report for SAP 2.1 will be a state-of-the-art review of the development and application of integrated scenarios of greenhouse gas emissions. This report will review and evaluate how the science and stakeholder communities define, develop, implement, and communicate scenarios in the global climate change context, and how this process might be enhanced or improved. It will include a review of past scenario development and application efforts. The second product (SAP 3.1) to be drafted by the CPDAC will be an assessment of climate models, their uses, limitations, sensitivity, feedbacks, and uncertainties.