Climate Impact Lab
The Climate Impact Lab brings together some of the world’s top climate scientists, economists, data engineers, and risk analysts to advance society’s understanding of the social and economic impacts of climate change. Across 25,000 geographic units globally—areas roughly the size of a U.S. county—the Lab’s team has produced localized projections of the impacts of climate change that matter for human lives: heat-induced mortality, agricultural productivity, the costs to workers of extreme temperatures, energy demand, coastal flooding risk, and more. When this data is combined, it provides an overall estimate of the costs of climate change (i.e. social cost of carbon)—a metric that can be used to demonstrate the exact benefits of strong mitigation and adaptation policies.
The Climate Impact Lab’s data is already being used to guide decision making around the world. Based on the Lab’s research, the U.S. Government recently quadrupled its estimate of the social cost of carbon that is now being used to set the stringency of new regulations to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Additionally, the Lab has forged extensive partnerships, including with: the United Nations Development Programme to bring actionable information to those planning policies and adaptation measures in the poorest economies expected to experience the worst impacts; Nike to study the connection between climate change and athletic performance; the International Monetary Fund, Federal Reserve System and Commodity Futures Trading Commission to provide an evidence-based snapshot of how climate change will impact investment decisions; Realtor.com and Redfin.com to help investors, developers, homebuyers and homeowners gauge flood risk for any property in America; and Microsoft’s AI for Earth to advance the state of climate knowledge by making its data and freely open to the global research community.