The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will shortly be filling key posts in the run up to preparing its Fifth Assessment Report on climate change, which is to be completed by 2013. Once again, three Working Groups (WGs) will be involved in drafting the report: WG I will focus on the scientific aspects of climate change, WG II on the consequences, and WG III on the socio-economic dimensions. Each Working Group will be co-chaired, with one chair coming from an industrialised country and the other from a developing country.

The Swiss climate scientist, Thomas Stocker, who is a professor at the University of Bern, has been proposed by IPCC scientists as a candidate to co-chair WG I along with a representative from a developing country. He has accepted the nomination and the Federal Council has decided to support his candidacy. The co-chairmanship would be an honour for the country and highlight the key role played by Switzerland in climate matters. It would also be a form of recognition for the work on climate research conducted in Switzerland. The IPCC will name the co-chairs of the various Working Groups over the summer. Thomas Stocker has already been involved in the drafting of previous Assessment Reports as an expert (see text box). The resulting costs of the Technical Support Unit helping the work of WG I for a period of up to 7 years would be covered by DETEC.

The IPCC received the Nobel Peace Prize in October 2007. Its first report, published in 1990, led to the creation of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Its second report, published in 1995, served as the basis for the Kyoto Protocol.

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Biography of Thomas Stocker

Thomas Stocker (born in 1959, from Zurich and Büron, LU) grew up in Zurich. He studied environmental physics at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETHZ), graduating in 1984. He completed his dissertation under the supervision of Kolumban Hutter at the ETHZ Laboratory of Hydraulics, Hydrology and Glaciology. This work won him the ETH Medal in 1987. After a period of research at University College London, he obtained a grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation, which enabled him to work on the development of efficient climate models and to study abrupt climate changes at McGill University (Canada) from 1989 to 1991. He then worked as Associate Research Scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory Columbia in New York from 1991 to 1993.

In 1993, Thomas Stocker was appointed Professor at the Physics Institute at the University of Bern, where he heads the Climate and Environmental Physics Department. The work conducted by his team focuses on the modelling of abrupt climate change, studies on past and future changes in ocean circulation, as well as on the reconstitution of climate history using ice cores from Greenland and the Antarctic. The Institute is world leader in determining the greenhouse gas concentrations of the last 800,000 years on the basis of air trapped in ice cores.

Thomas Stocker has authored or co-authored over 140 published scientific articles. Since 2006, he has been a member of the National Research Council of the Swiss National Science Foundation and, since 2008, he has been Director of the National Centre of Competence for Climate Research (NCCR Climate). Since 1997, he has also played a leading role in the work of the UN's IPCC. In particular, he coordinated the drafting of the chapters on Physical Climate Processes and Feedback and Global Climate Change Projections in the reports produced by WG I and published by the IPCC in 2001 and 2007. He was awarded the National Latsis Prize in 1993 and made Doctor honoris causa of the University of Versailles in 2006.

TEXT BOX Biography of Thomas Stocker

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Biography of Thomas Stocker

Swiss candidate for co-chairmanship of IPCC’s ‘Science’ Working Group