Climate and Sustainability Research Practice

Climate and sustainability research asks how the climate system works, what changes it brings, and what can be done about them. Its institutions are unusually shared. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, set up in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the UN Environment Programme, organises assessment through three working groups (the climate system, impacts and adaptation, and mitigation) and a Task Force on National Greenhouse Gas Inventories. Its sixth assessment cycle produced reports in 2021, 2022 and a Synthesis Report in March 2023, and a seventh cycle began in 2023.

Funding and infrastructure follow similar lines. In the United States, the Department of Energy's Earth and Environmental Systems Sciences Division supports atmospheric research, environmental system science and Earth system modelling, including the E3SM model and the ESS-DIVE data archive. Internationally, the Green Climate Fund, established in 2010 within the UNFCCC framework, finances adaptation and mitigation projects in developing countries. Model output is shared through the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project, and emissions are tracked through bodies such as the Global Carbon Project.

Accounting and reporting standards matter as much as instruments. The GHG Protocol sets corporate, value-chain, product, city and project standards. ISO 14040 and 14044 govern life cycle assessment. IFRS S2, issued by the ISSB in June 2023, sets climate-related disclosure requirements for investors, and the UN global indicator framework tracks the Sustainable Development Goals through 234 unique indicators. Anyone entering the field needs to know which standard, scenario set and dataset a claim rests on before comparing results. The specialisations linked from this hub cover modelling, impacts, mitigation, inventories, removals, life cycle assessment, finance, policy, sustainability science and cities.