Prof. Wenxia Zhang from the School of Atmospheric Sciences, Nanjing University, has been selected as a Lead Author for the Seventh Assessment Report (AR7) by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recently. Nominated by the Chinese government and selected by the IPCC Bureau, Prof. Wenxia Zhang will contribute as a Lead Author to Chapter 2 of IPCC Working Group I (WGI) AR7 on Large-scale changes in the climate system and their causes.
The IPCC, established by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), is the leading global authority for assessing climate change science. Its Assessment Reports synthesize the most advanced scientific understanding to inform decision-making worldwide. The selection process for AR7 was exceptionally rigorous, with only 664 experts chosen from 3,771 nominations submitted by governments globally, including 193 authors for WGI, 249 for WGII, and 222 for WGIII. Among them, 32 are from China (15 in WGI, 7 in WGII, and 10 in WGIII).
This appointment highlights China's growing influence in climate science, which will contribute to global climate governance and collaborative international efforts to tackle climate change.
Prof. Zhang specializes in climate change, with a focus on weather and climate extremes, global monsoons, and water cycle. She serves as Working Group members of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) Lighthouse Activities on Explaining and Predicting Earth System Change (EPESC) and Global Precipitation Experiment (GPEX). She is also a member of the Scientific Steering Committee for the Detection and Attribution Model Intercomparison Project (DAMIP) under the Seventh Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP7), a Contact Group member of the WCRP Global Extremes Platform (GEP), co-lead of the Work Package on "Understanding Extremes" under the UK-China Climate Science for Service Partnership (CSSP) China Project. In addition to her role in the IPCC report, Prof. Zhang also serves as a Lead Author for China's Fifth National Assessment Report on Climate Change and the 2025 National Assessment Report on Extreme Weather and Climate Events and Adaptation.