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Climate of changeReport: Shaunnagh O'Loughlin Professor Neville Nicholls first joined the international effort to assess the impact of climate change 17 years ago. Last year that contribution was rewarded when he shared in the Nobel Peace Prize with other Monash academics and scientists from across the world. When Neville Nicholls first started working with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), many of the world's scientists were yet to recognise the importance of climate change.
Professor Nicholls, now at Monash University's School of Geography and Environmental Science, was asked to take part because of his international reputation for developing techniques to monitor the drying El Nino effect to prepare climate forecasts. It was 1990, not long after the IPCC had been established by the United Nations and shortly before George Bush Senior would declare it was time for the world to do something to protect the environment. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change would soon be agreed upon by most nations across the world, including Australia. He says his role was minor in the very early years but grew with each IPCC assessment, to take over much of his working life. Only the very best and most well respected scientists from the 192 nations who make up the Panel are invited to take part. The scale of each assessment is enormous. IPCC scientists are divided into three working groups, each made up of about 150 lead authors. Each group is responsible for a 1000 page volume with teams of nine or 10 lead authors working together to write each chapter in the volume. Another group of contributing authors prepare text, graphs or data. Thus begins the arduous, time-consuming process of assessing thousands of the latest scientific, technical and socio-economic papers to evaluate the risk of climate change caused by human activity. "Every word of every chapter must be agreed upon, firstly by each author of the chapter, and then by delegates from each country," Professor Nicholls said. "This can take hours and hours of negotiation. "I spent countless hours communicating with my IPCC colleagues via email and phone, even while on vacation and it may be to negotiate the wording of only one sentence, much to the amusement and sometimes frustration of my family!" When the IPCC asked for volunteers for its fourth assessment in 2002, Professor Nicholls didn't hesitate to do his third tour of duty, this time as a lead author of the chapter on detecting and attributing the causes of climate change. "It was a much greater commitment than previous assessments - the chapter I worked on involved the review of over 550 papers. "Even so, it was a lot of fun and a great adrenalin rush; it's unlike anything a scientist does in day-to-day life. "The prize has helped us get over our biggest hurdle - getting people to sit up and take notice," Professor Nicholls said. Last November, when the Nobel Peace Prize was about to be announced, Professor Nicholls knew the IPCC was one of the favourites and he watched the live webcast at home with much anticipation. But he wasn't prepared for his wife's response when he told her: "That's nice dear, but don't forget, you're painting the bathroom tomorrow." "After 35 years of researching climatic science and three IPCC assessments my family has become a little blasé about it all," he laughs. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The Monash IPCC Team
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