The figures and data shown in this app are taken from a database developed in the framework of Marbaix et al. (2025) Climate change risks illustrated by the IPCC burning embers [→ References].
The database provides a new, comprehensive and structured storage for the information about embers, figures, and related information. This facilitates data consultation, and has the potential to facilitate collaboration to extend the descriptive information about each ember: they are provided in a common framework instead of being spread across spreadsheets, text documents, and figures. With an authorized account, researchers may update the data associated to each ember, as explained below under How to contribute?.
The database is designed to harmonise the presentation of the numerical data, eliminating limitations to comparability that are not fundamental. In particular, numerical data are provided with a 'standard variable name' which clarify if, and how, these can be shown with a common vertical axis ('hazard' level, such as global mean temperature). This is specifically useful for embers which were assessed against mean sea-surface temperature, and can be converted to the usual global mean temperature when a suitable rule is defined — as done in IPCC's Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere (SROCC, Bindoff et al., 2019) and discussed in Marbaix et al. (2025) [→ References].
Data are available in two ways:
The archive file contains all the data from the database which is publicly available. Availability depends on the ‘publication status’: for all embers, the numerical data needed to draw the diagram is available, but the availability of the descriptive fields varies. Indeed, the description of embers and transitions is complete for a fraction of all embers only: filling all descriptive fields is an ideal goal that can only be approached over the long term.
Examples of how these data can be used are given in Marbaix et al. (2025)[→ References]. The computer code to build the figures presented in this paper is available on GitHub.
The archive file has been designed with the FAIR data principles in mind (Wilkinson et al., 2016). The file is published on Zenodo (doi:10.5281/zenodo.12626977). This provides a unique identifier for the data, versioning, and long-term availability. The data is provided in JSON format, so that it can be accessed from many software environments. The file includes a metadata section containing general information such as when the data was extracted from the database, followed by a description of each data field and finally the data itself. More information is available in Marbaix et al. (2025).
The data must be attributed to all the IPCC reports listed with the file on Zenodo; this bibliographic information is also included in the file itself. The data is provided under the Creative Commons BY 4.0 license.
The Application Program Interface (API) provides up-to-date data from the server to external computer code. Requests may target a subset of the embers according to their unique identifier, keywords, long name, source report, or scenario. Access information is available in Marbaix et al. (2025), in particular within Supplement S1 [→ References].
While the current database contains the numerical data for all embers assessed so far and the descriptive information for a significant fraction of these, getting comprehensive information for each ember is a very challenging task — it can only be approached progressively, and would benefit from help of experts, notably experts involved in the assessment. We have made efforts to facilitate this collaboration.
For a quick start, it is possible to download the existing data from the page presenting an ember (it can be obtained as a Word file) and send an edited copy to the database maintainers. Scientists willing to provide a larger contribution may create a login and ask for editor status. This identity verification step is necessary to ensure that editors are qualified and aware of what is expected, and that contributions will be duly recognised. Editing is made as simple as possible: it is done through the same interface as data consultation. Editors can only change unpublished fields, so that the content subject to editing is not shown to visitors until it is finalised (the publication status is set by database administrators). This process may be adjusted as experience is gained, to make the benefit of contributions available to all while protecting the database against unwanted changes and ensuring the quality of its content. For this reason, all edits are confidentially logged with the name of the editing user, and care is taken that no content would be lost even in the advent of a technical problem or human mistake.
All information must have a precise source. For description of the assessed risks and explanations about the transitions, this is a reference to a section or other material from the primary source of the ember, which for all embers to date is an IPCC report (except for AR4). In the rare cases where it is necessary, contextual / explanatory information (such as a definition) may be obtained from another source, in which case the bibliographic reference should be added to the 'Specific references' field. If no reference is given, this means that the statement is an explanation by the editors of the database, such as regarding why an item of information was included or not. These should be limited to rare cases where an contextual information that is not part of the scientific assessment is needed for clarity.
Do not hesitate to contact us for more information, thanks for your interest.