International Union for Quaternary Research

The International Union for Quaternary Research (INQUA) was founded in 1928. It has members from a number of scientific disciplines who study the environmental changes that occurred during the glacial ages, the last 2.6 million years. One goal of these investigators is to document the timing and patterns in past climatic changes to help understand the causes of changing climates.

INQUA is a Scientific Union member of the International Council for Science. INQUA holds an international congress normally every four years. The congresses serve as an educational forum as well as the opportunity for the various commissions, committees, and working groups to conduct business in person. Past congresses have been held in Copenhagen (1928), Leningrad (1932), Vienna (1936), Rome (1953), Madrid (1957), Warsaw (1961), Boulder (1965), Paris (1969), Christchurch (1973), Birmingham (1977), Moscow (1982), Ottawa (1987), Beijing (1991), Berlin (1995), Durban (1999), Reno (2003), Cairns (2007), and Bern (2011).

The most recent INQUA Congress (XIX) was held in Nagoya, Japan, in July 2015. In 2019 the next INQUA Congress (XX) will take place in Dublin, Ireland.

In 2007 the union issued a statement on climate change in which they reiterated the conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and urged all nations to take prompt action in line with the UNFCCC principles:

Human activities are now causing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gasses - including carbon dioxide, methane, tropospheric ozone, and nitrous oxide - to rise well above pre-industrial levels….Increases in greenhouse gasses are causing temperatures to rise…The scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt action….Minimizing the amount of this carbon dioxide reaching the atmosphere presents a huge challenge but must be a global priority.