Offered help to IPCC to strengthen quality control process: European Union

Backing the controversy-ridden IPCC, the European Union (EU) today said it had offered to help the UN climate panel strengthen its quality control processes.

"The IPCC has grown so much. The level of science and research has improved so much, there is participation of so many different partners of the world that we need to update the counter-assessment, the quality control of its work," Teresa Ribera, Spain's secretary of state for Climate Change told reporters here.

Spain is Chair of the 27-nation European Union. Ribera said she had personally written to RK Pachauri, the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) offering help in updating its procedures.

"I personally wrote a letter to the chair of IPCC offering help to update and help improve these kinds of controls," she said.

Ribera said the EU "fully supported" the work of the IPCC and said it was the "best institution" that was created by the international community to provide a scientific basis for its actions to tackle climate change.

On errors in the IPCC report, she said that some factual data could be misleading in such a long report but there were enough references to trace the source of the errors.

"This shows how rugged the system is and there is always an opportunity to update the processes," Ribera said.