High resolution datasets providing accurate measurements of weather around the globe are key inputs into many, if not most, economic analyses of climate change. These data have expanded our understanding of the impacts of climate change on a broad set of highly vulnerable economic and social outcomes. Despite their academic and political importance, processing and analysing historical and future climate data presents a high cost for many researchers, resulting in fewer and less diverse analyses or in analyses with errors at various steps of the process.
This project aims to produce tools and resources for economists interested in using climate data products for research on environmental topics such as the social and economic impacts of climate change. In particular, this project will develop three products for researchers: Open-source packages to automate the spatial and temporal aggregation of climate data for downstream statistical analysis, written resources that review the methodology underlying climate data processing and econometric methods for applying them to research questions, and an online repository for accessing and sharing pre-processed data products. The goal of the project is to lower barriers for researchers who are interested in climate research but do not have the computational resources or expertise to generate the necessary inputs easily.
