APCC Steering Committee & Working Group

The APCC Steering Committee (APCC SC) is a permanent body of the Climate Change Centre Austria (CCCA).

The APCC SC does not itself produce outputs, but rather ensures the continuity and process quality of APCC products, which are authored by the scientific community — currently within the framework of the AAR2 under the leadership of Daniel Huppmann, Margreth Keiler, Keywan Riahi and Harald Rieder.

The APCC SC consists of at least three positions:

• 1 representative of a CCCA member organisation
• 1 or more international scientists
• 1 stakeholder (person from public administration, or similar)

The following requirements should be met:

• at least 1 person with experience in assessment reports (IPCC/APCC) should be represented.
• good coverage of different scientific disciplines (natural and social sciences).
• gender balance

The current composition of the Steering Committee is as follows:

• Sabine Fuss (MCC-Berlin and Humboldt University of Berlin)
• Helmut Haberl (University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna)
• Nora Mitterböck (Administration representative — Federal Ministry for Agriculture, Forestry, Climate and Environment, Regions and Water Management, Section VI — Environment and Climate, Division VI/1 — General Climate Policy)
• Philipp Maier (Deputy Administration representative — Federal Ministry for Agriculture, Forestry, Climate and Environment, Regions and Water Management, Section VI — Environment and Climate, Division VI/1 — General Climate Policy)

former members from administration:

• Gertraud Wollansky (BMK) — until October 2025
• Martina Schuster (BMK) — until end of 2020

former co-opted members for the AAR2:

• Maaike Bader (Univ. Marburg)
• Joeri Rogelj (Imperial College London)

For each ongoing APCC product (Special Report, Assessment Report), the APCC SC has access to an authorised person from the project team who can provide information (e.g. Co-Chair, project coordination, Lead Author). The body may also call on additional resource persons.

As outlined above, the APCC SC does not itself produce outputs, but rather has the task of ensuring the continuity and process quality of APCC products. This includes reviewing

• the review process with regard to process quality, the qualifications of reviewers, and adequate subject coverage of the report's content
• compliance with the APCC quality standards
• the interdisciplinary treatment of the topic

The APCC SC can make recommendations to the CCCA Board and propose external reviewers and review editors for the review process, whereby the selection of review editors is in principle the responsibility of the respective project leadership team.

Upon completion of an APCC product, the project team of the respective APCC product confirms in writing that the quality criteria have been met.

The APCC Working Group

• was established by the CCCA Board and resolved by the CCCA General Assembly in June 2015, in order to carry forward the APCC project
• is an open group, enabling the involvement of the entire scientific community
• is chaired by the Chair of the APCC SC
• accepts proposals from the scientific community for future APCC products, discusses and explores possible topics for future APCC products, and prospectively submits proposals for suitable APCC product topics to the CCCA Board for the coming years
• evaluates proposals from the scientific community according to the criteria of feasibility, public interest in the topic, appropriate definition and scope of the topic, and submits them to the CCCA Board for resolution
• proposes members for the APCC SC and submits these proposals to the CCCA Board
• is accountable to the CCCA Board
• is responsible for ensuring that CCCA member organisations and the CCCA community are actively involved in the preparation of assessment reports (e.g. through use of the various CCCA communication channels, supported by the CCCA Secretariat)
• discusses the definition and thematic scope of APCC products and develops corresponding proposals

Invitations to meetings of the APCC Working Group in general, and to meetings in which specific topics are explored in particular, are issued through the following CCCA communication channels:

• Email to all members of the APCC Working Group
• Email to the member representatives of CCCA
• Information on the APCC Working Group website
• Entry in the CCCA website calendar

Topic identification for Special Reports

Thematic proposals for Special Reports are brought to the APCC Working Group from the scientific community. These are collected and discussed. The process for this is as follows:

• The scientific community is invited to submit topic proposals to CCCA.
• The Working Group explores possible topics and proposes these to the APCC Steering Committee and the CCCA Board, which also issues recommendations in this regard.
• The APCC SC evaluates the topics and selects three possible topics, which the Board then endorses. CCCA subsequently sends the topic proposals to the BMK/the Climate Fund.
• Proponents of a topic are invited to present their proposals at a Working Group meeting and to clarify the procedure and requirements together with the APCC SC.
• This is followed by the Climate Fund call for proposals and the subsequent selection of the Special Report topic by the Climate Fund.

The following conditions must be met for a Special Report:

• The topic has sufficient breadth.
• The scientific community is large enough to comprehensively cover the topic.
• A sufficient quantity and quality of existing, usable studies, literature, etc. is available.
• The willingness of the community exists to develop an APCC product.
• Funding by stakeholders/funders is feasible.

Download (pdf): Description of the APCC Working Group

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