Over 2000 delegates from 80 nations have gathered this week in Copenhagen to update the global assessment of climate change, and I’m fortunate enough to be one of them.

Over the next few days, the International Scientific Conference on Climate Change will hear from world experts including climatologists, social scientists and economists on how the prognosis for global warming, and its physical and societal impacts, has changed since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued its last report in 2007. The science in the 2007 report is now effectively 4-5 years out of date, so it’s clearly time for an update, which is why experts are here this week.

The updated assessment will be in the format of a 30-page synthesis document, to be published in June.

It will be peer-reviewed but not IPCC-style; that’s because the ultimate aim of the congress is to deliver a hard-hitting message on the urgency of climate change to policymakers and the media ahead of the UN Conference in December, where delegates will again converge on Copenhagen, this time to agree a successor to the Kyoto Protocol.

Among the speakers who kicked off proceedings this morning was congress chair and marine scientist Katherine Richardson, who spoke to me ahead of time about why the congress is taking place and what it hopes to deliver. Read the full interview here.

I’ll be speaking in a session on Thursday on communicating climate change (and particularly on the role of blogs) and both I and my estimable colleague, Oliver Morton, will be blogging over the next few days on anything that especially surprises or interests us. For the full programme, see here.

Olive Heffernan