Managing a FAIR Climate Change Data Catalogue: Lessons Learned from IPCC AR6 and Recommendations for AR7

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Data Distribution Centre (DDC) serves as a critical registry for climate change data, providing a shared infrastructure to ensure data quality and accessibility for the scientific community. Managing data to support IPCC reports presents challenges due to its multidisciplinary nature and diverse sources.

Key to this effort is the curation of metadata, particularly developing a metadata schema that enables data to be FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable). This presentation examines the IPCC's experience over the past four years in curating and preserving digital objects, focusing on the implementation of FAIR and open data principles. We will explore the successes and setbacks of the AR6 experience, with particular attention to the development and application of a metadata schema. Finally, we will offer recommendations for consolidating and expanding this approach for AR7 to enhance transparency, reproducibility, and reusability of assessment outcomes.

This initiative aims to increase the transparency of IPCC's work, improve the reproducibility and reusability of assessment outcomes, optimize the utilization of the IPCC DDC's services, and promote compliance with open science best practices.