The main purpose of this short guide is to help bridge the gap between science and policy and to increase public awareness about the urgency of action to combat climate change and its impacts.

This booklet is intended for those who do not have the time - and may not have the scientific expertise - to read the entire Synthesis Report from the IPCC.

This guide, while it aims to present the substance and the sense of the IPCC’s original Synthesis Report, is designed to be read as a narrative. So it tells the story in a simplified language while taking the liberty of shortening or enhancing specific parts where it appears useful and illustrating the text with additional graphics. You will always find the source of the data mentioned if it differs from the IPCC’s own.

The guide covers the six original topic headings as in the Summary for Policymakers but the order in which they are  presented here differs from the IPCC publication. It starts by spelling out what the IPCC knows and what it considers as key questions. 

Although the guide is intended for lay readers, not climate scientists, inevitably it uses some scientific terms. Readers will find a fuller explanation of some of them in the short Glossary at the end of the guide: they appear in the text in italics.

In their assessment reports, the IPCC uses commonly used terms with a very specific meaning. In order to simplify the language, this guide abandon these specialized terms. The. The term “agreement” IPCC also uses several terms which are likely to be self-explanatory: they include high agreement / medium agreement and high evidence / medium evidence refers to agreement found within the scientific literature.

Full document in PDF format (7.02MB); Number of pages: 60p; Publication date: 2009

Source: Zunia