About Us
Climate DataLab is a collaborative, dynamic learning environment dedicated to helping people of all backgrounds and expertise levels become familiar with the use of climate model output – one of the most important tools available for understanding the ongoing and projected future impacts of climate change. We hope that as it develops, the community of users and contributors to Climate DataLab tools continues to expand!
Climate DataLab Motivation
The Climate DataLab project was begun in 2023, under a National Science Foundation “CAREER” award to PI Samantha Stevenson. Based at the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management at the University of California, Sam has been teaching courses for graduate students aiming to build careers in environmental science since 2017. These courses include training in climate change impacts and adaptation, as well as environmental data science more broadly.
Over the years, Sam began to notice a pattern in interacting with cohorts of masters and PhD students: there is a large amount of enthusiasm for learning about and working with climate model information, but the steepness of the learning curve required to actually use this information can be prohibitive. Unfamiliar file formats, non-intuitive and often poorly documented acronyms, and difficult-to-understand Web resources combine to make the process of getting started extremely difficult for new users. There did not exist a single place where a novice user could go to get a comprehensive, “end to end” explanation of all the complex issues involved and become conversant enough with the datasets to use them effectively: this is the training gap that Climate DataLab is designed to fill!
This effort is necessarily a work in progress, since the world of climate model output is constantly changing, and the breadth of backgrounds of interested users is enormous. But we hope that feedback from the wider community will help continually improve these resources, and increase accessibility so that more people around the world can make use of these critically important datasets!
The Climate DataLab Team
As of March 2025, the core members of the Climate DataLab effort are
- Samantha Stevenson: PI
- Cali Pfleger: coding resources and mentoring for undergraduates
- Fletcher Hozven: code and tutorial development
Previous members of the team who have now moved on to other endeavors are:
- Miriam Martin Chales: Web development and background research
- Evelyn Bermudez: code and tutorial development
Students emerging as environmental leaders
Miriam and Evelyn were members of the UCSB-based Bren-Environmental Studies Leadership program, a mentoring program for UCSB undergraduates. They were part of the project during the 2023-24 academic year, and played a leading role in getting Climate DataLab off the ground.
Fletcher is also a member of the Bren-ES Leaders program, who has built many of our GitHub tutorials and has become quite the coder!
Cali is a PhD student in the Stevenson group, who has compiled a wealth of resources for learning about Python coding and climate modeling tools. Her input and guidance has been extremely helpful for getting everyone started and for developing the first phase of Climate DataLab materials!
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