Abstract
The information provided in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC; http://ipcc.ch ) Assessment Reports (ARs) inform climate change policy development. Within the IPCC the scientific coordination of the ARs is conducted by three Working Groups (WGs) comprising of the Bureaus supported by their Technical Support Units (TSUs). Data management support is provided by the IPCC Data Distribution Centre (DDC; http://ipcc-data.org ), which is overseen by the Task Group on Data Support for Climate Change Assessments (TG-Data; formerly TGICA). The DDC is a federated structure that is currently managed by the Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA; http://www.ceda.ac.uk/ ), United Kingdom; the World Data Center for Climate (WDCC; http://www.wdc-climate.de ), Germany; and the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN; http://www.ciesin.columbia.edu/ ) at Columbia University, U.S. For the IPCC Sixth Assessment cycle (AR6), analyses of climate simulations and observations published in scientific literature will be assessed. The reports will include figures and tables prepared from the underlying digital information. The DDC plays an increasingly important role in facilitating the exchange of data, as well as curating the assessed datasets, scripts and provenance records to facilitate the assessment process and to support the traceability of AR6 results through long-term continuity of data management and curation. These issues, among others, are addressed by the DDC support group ( https://cedadev.github.io/ipcc_ddc ) currently consisting of members from the three TSUs and the three DDC managers.
Highlights
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the United Nations (UN) body for assessing the science related to climate change
The Task Group on Data Support for Climate Change Assessments (TG-Data; formerly TGICA) oversees the Data Distribution Centre (DDC), which manages key data and information resources generated by IPCC assessments that are needed in subsequent assessments and that are useful to the broader scientific and policy communities
Such efforts are essential given the long history of the IPCC assessments – over more than three decades – and the inevitable turnover of scientists and other contributors involved in the process
Summary
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the United Nations (UN) body for assessing the science related to climate change. A primary challenge for TG-Data and the DDC is to identify, access, archive, and document the critical data and information resources stemming from IPCC activities, especially once the assessment is completed and TSUs scale back between assessments Such efforts are essential given the long history of the IPCC assessments – over more than three decades – and the inevitable turnover of scientists and other contributors involved in the process. CoreTrustSeal (http://www.coretrustseal.org; Edmunds et al, 2016) sets a basic quality standard for trustworthy repositories for research data, jointly developed by WDS and the Data Seal of Approval (DSA) These evolving best practices are important to consider in the continuing evolution of the DDC and its efforts to provide highquality data stewardship and support to arguably one of the most important, long-term scientific endeavors in modern history
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