Introduction
After 18 months of research and development, the Carbon Brief is launching the Cosmos project, an ambitious initiative aimed at building the world's largest database of climate change research. This project seeks to capture the vast body of human knowledge about climate change that has accumulated over more than a century of academic studies.
The Cosmos Database
The Cosmos database features over 1.8 million individual publications linked by 40 million citation relationships. This project aims to map and analyze the fundamental knowledge of the scientific community about the climate crisis, including the classification of academic publications, authors, and institutions most cited, known as Cosmos 500.
Objectives and Development
As the project develops, the database will reveal, for example, how interest in different areas of climate science has changed over time, as well as identify potential knowledge gaps and opportunities for future research. To build a “universe” of climate science, the Carbon Brief used the set of reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as a basis.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
Since 1990, the panel has published the world's most reliable summaries of the latest scientific discoveries related to the climate. To produce a single IPCC report, hundreds of scientists work for years to gather information from thousands of sources. The panel works in “assessment cycles”, which typically last between five and seven years.
Future Updates
In the coming months and years, the Carbon Brief plans to conduct new rounds of analysis, updating and expanding Cosmos at the end of each year. This ongoing effort will ensure that the database remains up-to-date and relevant, providing valuable insights for the scientific community and the general public.
Conclusion
The Cosmos project is an important initiative for understanding and combating climate change. By gathering and analyzing existing scientific knowledge, Cosmos can help identify priority research areas and support informed decision-making on climate policies.