ABSTRACT
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) periodically develops an assessment of the state of the climate. The current report was developed in 2012, including a new section (from previous reports) on climate adaptation. This summary introduces readers to the ideas of and the relationships across risk, exposure, vulnerability, adaptive capacity, and resilience. The discussion is based on scientific consensus to date across several disciplines regarding how these elements affect each other.
