The head of the United Nations panel on climate science resigned on Tuesday after allegations of sexual harassment were filed against him in India, where he lives and works.
Rajendra K. Pachauri, whose 13 years as chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had made him one of the world’s most important voices on the risks of global warming, had been scheduled to leave the post in October. But he tendered his resignation early after news that a woman employed at an institute that he heads in India had accused him of unwanted text messages, emails and other contact.
The accuser, 29, has not been publicly identified. Lawyers for Dr. Pachauri, 74, have said in court filings that his computer and phone were hacked and that the unwanted messages were sent by someone else to make him look bad. The police in India are investigating, as is an internal-complaints committee at the Energy and Resources Institute in New Delhi.
The allegations could take years to resolve in India’s slow-moving justice system. “The I.P.C.C. needs strong leadership and dedication of time and full attention by the chair in the immediate future, which under the current circumstances I may be unable to provide,” Dr. Pachauri wrote in his resignation letter.
The panel is a worldwide committee of thousands of scientists and other experts, appointed by the United Nations and its member governments, who review and periodically summarize the findings of climate research. The chairman’s role is largely organizational and ceremonial.
The group’s increasingly urgent warnings about the risks of unchecked greenhouse-gas emissions have galvanized a worldwide effort — costing hundreds of billions of dollars a year, but so far largely unsuccessful — to bring them under control.
Under Dr. Pachauri’s leadership, the panel won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, along with Al Gore, for its efforts to warn the public about the risks of climate change, and Dr. Pachauri accepted the prize on its behalf at a ceremony that year in Oslo.
But that moment of triumph was followed by several black eyes for the panel, including the finding that one of its reports had exaggerated the rate of melting of glaciers in the Himalayas. Dr. Pachauri resisted calls in 2010 for his resignation.
His efforts in recent years included trying to tighten the panel’s review procedures.
The resignation came as a meeting of the I.P.C.C. was starting in Nairobi, Kenya. The panel, which completed its fifth major assessment of climate science last fall at a meeting in Copenhagen, is debating how to organize its future efforts.
In a statement that included no substantive discussion of the allegations against Dr. Pachauri, the panel said that its vice chairman, Ismail El Gizouli, would serve as interim chairman until a new leader was elected in October.
The I.P.C.C. has long been a target of criticism for opponents of the scientific consensus on climate change, and they issued new denunciations of both Dr. Pachauri and the panel over the past week as details of the harassment allegations emerged in India.
Donna Laframboise, author of a critical book about the I.P.C.C., pointed out in a blog post that Dr. Pachauri’s resignation letter included no apology to his colleagues on the panel.
“What’s missing from this letter is any suggestion of remorse,” she wrote. “Where are his words of apology to the thousands of I.P.C.C.-linked scientists whose honor is now eternally tarnished by their association with him?”
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