Rajendra Pachauri will continue as chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

“I can say with confidence that I will stay until the end of my term in 2014,” the Indian economist said today at a press conference in Busan, South Korea, where delegates from more than 100 countries had gathered this week for the IPCC’s 32nd plenary session .

Pachauri had come under fire last year after a number of embarrassing errors in the IPCC’s last assessment report, including on the rate of glacier retreat in the Himalayan, came to light.

After these slip-ups, the InterAcademy Council published a report on 30 August recommending a series of overhauls for the IPCC.

This week, delegates in Busan agreed to immediately implement some of the recommendations. The IPCC says it will therefore issue new guidelines on how to describe and characterize scientific uncertainties, on the use of ‘gray’ literature, and on handling errors in its reports.

But a number of more far-reaching recommendations concerning the IPCC’s management and procedures will not be implemented so quickly.

The plenary agreed to form a task group to address the issue of whether the IPCC needs an executive director and whether the term of its chairman should be limited to one assessment. Pachauri, who has acted as the group’s chairman since 1999, will not be affected by the outcome as any new rules will only apply to future elections.

The task group will report to the IPCC’s plenary which, at its next session in May 2011, may or may not implement the proposed new policies.

Three other task groups are to propose options for implementing a more rigorous conflicts-of-interest policy, new communication strategies, and improved procedures for compiling and reviewing future IPCC reports.

Lead authors for the IPCC’s fifth assessment report (AR5), scheduled for release in 2014, have already been appointed.

“I have a mandate to oversee the completion of AR5 and I am committed to oversee the implementation of reforms from which the IPCC will greatly benefit,” Pachauri told the press conference. “I will carry on in my role.”

Image credit: Mikhail Evstafiev/Wikipedia