At the recently concluded Plenary of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in Sofia, Bulgaria, delegates failed to finalise a schedule for the upcoming seventh assessment report (AR7) cycle.
The IPCC is an intergovernmental body of the United Nations (UN) which provides policymakers with periodic scientific assessments on climate change.
AR7 is the next in its periodic assessment and will summarise the most recently published climate science.
The 61st plenary session, which ran from 27 July to 2 August, brought together delegates from 195 member governments and ultimately ended without a conclusion on the key decision of the report schedule.
Some countries pushed to have this report finalised by 2028, in time for the second global stocktake. However, other countries, including India, China, Saudi Arabia, and others, have resisted, citing concerns about quality and inclusivity.
These reports take between six and seven years to produce.
Delegates will return to debate the decision regarding the deadline in February 2025, when an agreement on the outline of report content will also need to be decided.
The IPCC meeting in Sofia did, however, see a consensus reached on the outlines of reports on cities and climate change and on short-lived climate forcers (SLCFs).