The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) started preparations for its Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) in 2015. Now, after years of work and a delay due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the IPCC will meet to approve the Summary for Policymakers (SPM) of the Working Group I (WG I) contribution to the AR6 and accept the underlying scientific technical assessment, which focus on the physical science basis of climate change.

To this end, delegates will engage in line-by-line discussions of the draft SPM. The WG I Co-Chairs will introduce the draft SPM and provide opening explanatory remarks, including on latest revisions to the draft. First, each headline statement in the document will be discussed in plenary. After this, authors will retreat to consider comments received from government representatives and publish a document explaining the outcome of their discussions. If needed, further focused discussions will be held in a dedicated contact group meeting before taking up the headline statements again for approval in plenary. To reach agreement on specific wording, informal breakout groups and informal discussions among government representatives will be facilitated, as necessary.

Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the meeting will be conducted online. Against this background, the WG I session was extended from one to two weeks. The meeting days will typically feature two to three plenary sessions and two to three contact group sessions, each scheduled for three hours. Simultaneous interpretation in the official UN languages will be provided during the plenary sessions.

The approval process will be conducted in the context of the fourteenth session of WG I (WG I-14). After a short, mostly procedural opening on 26 July, the fifty-fourth session of the IPCC will reconvene on 6 August to formally accept the actions taken at WG I-14.