Climate risk assessment is key in quantifying and communicating risks in a clear and concise manner. Due to the rapidly occurring climate changes, the need for a more complex integration and a more effective overview of the available and relevant data that are part of these assessments, especially on the temporal and spatial dynamics of risk, is growing. In this paper, we describe the benefits, challenges and opportunities for increasing the availability of temporal and spatial data needed to support climate risk assessment through the development of an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) atlas, integrated within IPCC working groups. We suggest that using a climate risk framework to organize this Atlas will result in a more practical resource for understanding and informing the risk assessments carried out by the IPCC, as well as making the methodologies and results more accessible to a wider audience. (Andrés Alegría, Elvira Poloczanska, Hans Poertne, more at nature.com)