A Scoping Quantification of the IPCC's Sixth Assessment Report for the Purpose of Using the Text Corpus in a Knowledge Graph

A Scoping Quantification of the IPCC's Sixth Assessment Report for the Purpose of Using the Text Corpus in a Knowledge Graph The seven main reports of IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report were examined with respect to a number of quantifiable aspects, including: author lists, word count, references, data, glossary terms, and acronyms, etc. Summary: A report on quantify the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report corpus, as step one, for the software development project to creating a knowledge graph to hold the report text corpus. The objective of this step in the development process is to establish the scale and scope of what is to be included in the knowledge graph. Keywords: IPCC, Sixth Assessment Report, AR6, climate change, semantic publishing, linked open data, Wikibase, Wikidata, MediaWiki, knowledge graph, climate knowledge graph, semanticclimate Authors Laura Oldenbourg, ORCID: 0009-0003-5070-0099 email: laura.oldenbour[email protected] Simon Worthington, ORCID: 0000-0002-8579-9717 Date: 2025-11-04 DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17516064 Wikidata: Q136701079 Licence: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode By Climate Knowledge Graph (CKG) project: https://tibhannover.github.io/climate-knowledgegraph/ About CKG project: An R&D project to make a knowledge graph of the open access parts of the 10,000 page IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report corpus. GitHub repository: https://github.com/TIBHannover/climate-knowledge-graph Short title: Report Quantifying AR6 Type of report: Software development project report Report series: CKG build #1 TIB Innofunds (July 2025-June 2026) Report series Zenodo (ckg-report-series-1): Funded by: TIB Innovation Fund Partners: TIB (ROR: 04aj4c181), #semanticClimate, and NIPGR (ROR: 04zw11527) Development roadmap 1. Scoping 1. Quantify report corpus (this report) 2. Report structure 3. Typesetting requirements for CKG system (CSS Paged Media) 2. Data modelling 1. Create corpus data model 2. Document data source addresses and collect data pre-import 3. Wikibase testing (prototype ideas) 3. RfCs – Overall system; Wikibase, and Data model (specific to Wikibase and LOD) 4. Import 1. Build text import Selenium module for CPS Impress 2. Define scope of corpus import 3. Build Selenium Scrape for AR6 text 4. Import AR6 text and supporting data into Wikibase 5. Output: Annotation and publishing 1. Enable Wikibase annotation features for IPCC and community: #semanticClimate; TIB terminology service; ORKG Reborn. (proof of concept) 2. AR6 report presentation in MediaWiki 3. Search in MediaWiki 4. Search, review, and publish (proof of concept) 5. Publication deposits: TIB Renate, TIB Open Publishing (scoping/proof of concept) Motivation The motivation for the exercise was to establish the extent to which the development of a knowledge graph would take shape from the reports. Description In the absence of a comprehensive quantitative analysis of the main reports of the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), the initial steps have been taken to compile a set of figures to gain a clearer understanding of the scope of these reports. As this preliminary round of data collection was partly based on manual counts and estimates, it will be necessary to complement and validate the figures through automated methods in a subsequent phase. Findings It is important to note these are preliminary scoping figures. Item Count Status Number of main reports 7 Definitive Open access license 6 Definitive Report DOIs (top level) 7 Good Page count 10,047 Approx. Word count 8,047,000 Approx. Authors 1,106 Approx * References 48,400 Approx. * SYR Notes - To be confirmed Figures 1,672 Approx. Data 66,834 Approx. * Glossary terms 925 Good Acronyms 3041 Approx. * Index terms 5463 Approx. * Translations See: methods Wikidata entries (report top level) 13 Approx. Wikidata entries - data types - To be confirmed Table 1: Summary of IPCC Assessment Report Six quantification. Provisional figures. *Contains duplicates Further work An automated count will be carried out using TIB Grobi software in Q1 2026. Methods The methods varied from task to task. For some figures, it was possible to find repositories to draw figures from, while in other cases we approximated figures in order to obtain at an estimate. See full detail on methods in the appendix: Appendix 1 - Data gathering and methods notebook. Appendix Appendix 1 - AR6 quantification - Data gathering and methods notebook. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17521819 Data and resources Quantification summary as csv and xlsx files. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17521935 Links and references Links IPCC Report website: https://www.ipcc.ch/reports/ Website for AR6: https://www.ipcc.ch/assessment-report/ar6/ IPCC Authors’ repository https://apps.ipcc.ch/report/authors/authors.php IPCC glossary browser https://apps.ipcc.ch/glossary/ IPCC Data browser https://ipcc-data.org/ar6landing.html Wikipedia articles on reports: Wikipedia on WGI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPCC_Sixth_Assessment_Report#WG1report Wikipedia on WGII https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPCC_Sixth_Assessment_Report#Working_Group_2_report_(impacts ,_adaptation_and_vulnerability) Wikipedia on WGIII https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPCC_Sixth_Assessment_Report#Working_Group_3_report_(mitigati on_of_climate_change) Wikipedia on SR1.5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Report_on_Global_Warming_of_1.5_%C2%B0C Wikipedia on SRCCCL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Report_on_Climate_Change_and_Land Wikipedia on SROCC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Report_on_the_Ocean_and_Cryosphere_in_a_Changing_Cli mate References References in Zotero group: https://www.zotero.org/groups/2437020/semanticclimate/collections/SN3LG2KZ/tags/ ckg%20report%20quantification/collection --- Chavelli, Félix, and Sarah Connors. 2023. ‘Guest Post: What 13,500 Citations Reveal about the IPCC’s Climate Science Report’. CarbonBrief, March 16. https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-postwhat-13500-citations-reveal-about-the-ipccs-climate-science-report/ . Spera, Stephanie. 2021. ‘234 Scientists Read 14,000+ Research Papers to Write the IPCC Climate Report – Here’s What You Need to Know and Why It’s a Big Deal’. The Conversation, May 8. https://theconversation.com/234-scientists-read-14-000-research-papers-to-write-the-ipccclimate-report-heres-what-you-need-to-know-and-why-its-a-big-deal-165587.