[Paper Review] Implementation of FAIR principles in the IPCC: The WGI AR6 Atlas repository

Maialen Iturbide, J. Rodrı́guez Fernández+23 more|arXiv (Cornell University)|Apr 29, 2022

Research Data Management Practices10 citations

TL;DR

This paper presents the implementation of FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) principles in the IPCC's WGI AR6 Atlas repository, using open-source Jupyter notebooks, provenance tracking, and version-controlled data to ensure transparency and reproducibility. The key contribution is a fully documented, interactive, and publicly accessible repository enabling community scrutiny and customized regional climate analysis via web-based execution.

ABSTRACT

The Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has adopted the FAIR Guiding Principles. The Atlas chapter of Working Group I (WGI) is presented as a test case. Here, we describe the application of these principles in the Atlas, the challenges faced during its implementation, and those that remain for the future. We present the open source repository resulting from this process, which collects the code (including annotated Jupyter notebooks), data provenance, and some aggregated datasets underpinning the key figures in the Atlas chapter and its interactive companion (the Interactive Atlas), open to scrutiny by the scientific community and the general public. We describe the informal pilot review conducted on this repository to gather recommendations that led to significant improvements. Finally, a working example illustrates the use of the repository to produce customized regional information, extending the Interactive Atlas products and running the code interactively in a web browser using Jupyter notebooks. Atlas repository: doi:10.5281/zenodo.5171760.

Motivation & Objective

• To operationalize FAIR principles within the IPCC's Sixth Assessment Report, specifically in the WGI AR6 Atlas chapter.
• To address challenges in making climate model data and analysis code transparent, reusable, and auditable for scientific and public scrutiny.
• To develop a reproducible, open-source infrastructure for climate data products that supports interactive exploration and customization.
• To demonstrate the feasibility of applying FAIR principles to large-scale, authoritative climate assessments.

Proposed method

• Implementation of FAIR principles through version-controlled open-source repositories on Zenodo, hosting code, data, and provenance metadata.
• Use of Jupyter notebooks with annotated code to document and reproduce key figures and analyses from the Atlas.
• Integration of data provenance tracking to record data lineage, transformations, and dependencies.
• Deployment of an interactive web-based environment allowing users to run code and generate customized regional outputs directly in a browser.
• Conduct of an informal pilot review process to gather community feedback and improve repository quality.
• Adoption of standardized metadata and persistent identifiers (DOIs) for datasets and software to ensure long-term accessibility.

Experimental results

Research questions

• RQ1 How can FAIR principles be effectively implemented in a high-stakes, large-scale scientific assessment like the IPCC's Sixth Assessment Report?
• RQ2 What technical and organizational challenges arise when applying FAIR principles to climate model data and analysis code in a collaborative, multi-institutional context?
• RQ3 To what extent can open, interactive, and reproducible code repositories enhance transparency and trust in climate science?
• RQ4 How can community feedback be systematically integrated into the development of scientific data repositories to improve quality and usability?

Key findings

• The WGI AR6 Atlas repository was successfully published with a DOI (10.5281/zenodo.5171760), ensuring persistent and citable access to all components.
• The repository includes annotated Jupyter notebooks, provenance records, and aggregated datasets that fully support the key figures in the Atlas and its interactive version.
• An informal pilot review led to significant improvements in code quality, documentation, and usability, demonstrating the value of community engagement.
• A working example shows that users can customize regional climate analyses by running the code interactively in a web browser, extending the functionality of the Interactive Atlas.
• The implementation demonstrates that FAIR principles can be practically applied to complex, authoritative climate assessments without compromising scientific rigor.
• The approach enables reproducibility, transparency, and extensibility, setting a precedent for future IPCC reports and scientific data publishing.