'Hours on a footnote’: Scientists felt joy, frustration in making U.N. climate report

Scientists Joeri Rogelj and Piers Forster hold up signs urging reduction in carbon emissions after completing a major U.N. climate report, in a house in Harrogate, Britain August 7, 2021. Picture taken August 7, 2021. Stella Forster/Handout via REUTERS

GENEVA (Reuters) - After spending hundreds of hours in virtual meetings to complete this week's major U.N. climate report, scientists Piers Forster and Joeri Rogelj celebrated in a way their peers could not: by hugging.

Britain-based Forster had been weary of the isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic and invited his co-author to work alongside him in his Harrogate kitchen as they worked with other scientists around the world to thrash out the final version of the report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1.