Chapter 1 Introduction

The World Climate Programme

A comprehensive understanding of the global climate system can only be achieved within a framework of coordinated and cooperative international action. Any overview of Australian climate activities must therefore be set within the context of the various international climate programs now in place and in which Australia is a participant.

Formal arrangements for international cooperation in the study of climate have existed in some form for more than a century. In 1873, the International Meteorological Organization (IMO) was formed. Later, in 1967, the Global Atmospheric Research Programme (GARP) was established jointly by the intergovernmental World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the non-governmental (then) International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU). In 1979, GARP was followed by the establishment of the World Climate Programme (WCP) by the Eighth World Meteorological Congress in response to an appeal issued by the First World Climate Conference (FWCC) in February 1979. The WCP was established as a major international, interagency and interdisciplinary effort to provide the means of foreseeing future possible changes in climate, and aiding nations in the application of climatic data and knowledge to the planning and management of all aspects of human activities (Zillman, 1980).

Throughout its first decade of operation, the WCP consisted of four components dealing respectively with climate data, applications, impacts and research. During this time, substantial progress was made on many aspects of the climate issue, and in light of this, and the increasingly forceful statements of concern from the scientific community at the prospect of climate change resulting from an enhanced greenhouse effect, the WMO convened a Second World Climate Conference (SWCC) to take stock of progress and to plan the way ahead.

The SWCC took place in Geneva in October-November 1990 under the joint sponsorship of the WMO, ICSU, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and its Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC), and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). It comprehensively reviewed the achievements of the WCP since 1979 along with the First Assessment Report of the IPCC. The IPCC had been set up jointly by WMO and UNEP in 1988 to provide a broadly-based international assessment of the state of knowledge of the science, impacts and response strategies for greenhouse-effect-induced climate change. The Conference Statement from the scientific and technical sessions of the SWCC set out a comprehensive listing of priorities for future climate research and applications and called for the establishment of GCOS, built upon the World Weather Watch (WWW) Global Observing System and the Integrated Global Ocean Services System (IGOSS), including both space-based and surface-based observing components. It was agreed that the proposed GCOS should underpin and support all four components of the WCP and, in particular, that it should be designed to meet the needs of:

(a) climate system monitoring, climate change detection and response monitoring, especially in terrestrial ecosystems;

(b) data for application to national economic development; and

(c) research towards improved understanding, modelling and prediction of the climate system.

The Declaration from the Ministerial segments of the Conference, which involved some 730 delegates from 137 countries, endorsed the initiation of action towards negotiation of a Framework Convention on Climate Change and called for the strengthening of national, regional and international research on climate and climate change. In particular, it invited the Eleventh World Meteorological Congress, in the formulation of plans for the future development of the World Climate Programme, to ensure that the necessary arrangements were established, in consultation with UNEP, UNESCO (and its IOC), FAO, ICSU and other relevant international organisations, for effective coordination of climate and climate change related research and monitoring programs. It urged that special attention be given to the economic and social dimensions of climate and climate change research.

In May 1991, the Eleventh World Meteorological Congress, following WMO consultation with the other co-sponsors of the SWCC, reconstituted the WCP to comprise:

• The World Climate Data and Monitoring Programme (WCDMP);
• The World Climate Applications and Services Programme (WCASP);
• The World Climate Impact Assessment and Response Strategies Programme (WCIRP);and
• The World Climate Research Programme (WCRP);

and established a Coordinating Committee for the World Climate Programme (CCWCP). It also formally established GCOS as an essential activity associated with the WCP.

The overall objectives of the WCP (World Meteorological Organization, 1999) are:

• to facilitate the effective collection and management of climate data and the monitoring of the global climate system, including the detection and assessment of climate variability and change;
• to foster the effective application of climate knowledge and information for the benefit of society and the provision of climate services, including the prediction of significant climate variations both natural and as a result of human activity;
• to assess the impacts of climate variability and change that could markedly affect economic or social activities and advise governments thereon, and contribute to the development of a range of socio-economic response strategies that could be used by governments and the community; and
• to improve the understanding of climate processes for determining the predictability of climate, including its variability and change, identifying the extent of human influence on climate and developing the capability for climate prediction.

The 1991 Congress approved a ten-year plan for the further development of the WCP and initiated action for the joint implementation, by the main co-sponsors of the SWCC, of both the WCP and GCOS. It set in train action for the IOC to join WMO and ICSU in the joint sponsorship of the WCRP, invited the Governing Council of UNEP to assume responsibility for the WCIRP in collaboration with WMO and other relevant agencies, and urged nations to establish National Climate Programs focused on their national objectives counterpart to those of the WCP.

An Intergovernmental Meeting on the World Climate Programme (IGM-WCP) was held in Geneva in April 1993 under the sponsorship of WMO, UNEP, UNESCO and its IOC, FAO, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and ICSU. Government representatives at the IGMWCP concluded that their climate-related needs had been well served and also acknowledged the essential role of international climate-related programs in providing the framework within which they could pool their individual commitments, gain access to worldwide effort and hence obtain substantial leverage to their own contribution. However, they concluded that an integrating framework for international climate programs, in the form of The Climate Agenda, would provide both improved cost-effectiveness and a more coordinated response to the emerging responsibilities placed upon them. Accordingly, the further development of the WCP has proceeded along the four main thrusts of The Climate Agenda:

• new frontiers in climate science and prediction;
• climate services for sustainable development;
• dedicated observations of the climate system; and
• studies of climate impact assessments and response strategies to reduce vulnerabilities.

The overall structure of the WCP and its relationship to the underpinning, but separately organised, GCOS is shown schematically in Figure 1.10, within the overall context of the Climate Agenda. While Figure 1.10 cannot hope to capture the complexity of all the many specialist climate and global change-related programs that come under the auspices of the Climate Agenda agencies, it identifies the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) which closely complements the WCRP and which is also underpinned by GCOS. The IGBP was established by ICSU in 1986 to describe and understand the interactive physical, chemical and biological processes that regulate the total earth system, the unique environment that it provides for life, the changes that are occurring in the system and the manner in which they are influenced by human activities. Given the broad cross agency interest in climate issues, there is acknowledged benefit in an interagency coordination mechanism. Following discussion, in particular, at World Meteorological Congress XIV in May 2003, the role and scope of this coordination function is currently under review.

Figure 1.10 The Climate Agenda embraces the activities of the World Climate Programme (WCP) and its subsidiary programmes, the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) and climate-related elements of the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS) and Global Terrestrial Observing System (GTOS), as well as elements of the International Council for Science’s (ICSU) International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP). The intergovernmental and non-governmental agencies that sponsor the WCP are represented on the currently inactive Inter Agency Committee for the Climate Agenda (IACCA) together with representatives of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The GCOS underpins and supports the individual components of the World Climate Programme (WCP) but is not formally a part of it. An associated programme which is relevant to the Climate Agenda but not formally part of it is the International Human Dimensions of Environmental Change Programme (IHDP) of ICSU and the International Social Science Council (ISSC).

View an enlarged version of Figure 1.10

The activities of the WCP themselves underpin and support the authoritative assessments of the science of climate change and associated impacts and possible response options undertaken periodically by the WMO-UNEP IPCC (Refer Chapter 7) and provide a scientific and technical basis for national and international actions following the ratification of the UNFCCC, and implementation of subsequent decisions by the Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC, and actions to implement Agenda 21.