Our Guiding Principles on the Use of Climate Data Are Now Published
We’re excited to share that the Guiding Principles on the Use of Climate Data have been published and are now available.
This document is the product of two and half years of iterative work among scientists on the Cal-Adapt: Analytics Engine project, shaped along the way by regular feedback from key climate data users, including energy utilities. It offers a practical, step-by-step process for working with climate data across a wide range of applications, from identifying data needs all the way through to reporting results.
You can access the Guiding Principles in two places:
- On our website, as part of our Scientific Guidance section: https://analytics.cal-adapt.org/scientific-guidance/guiding-principles/
- As a formal report, published on Zenodo with a citable DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22680032
What’s in the Guiding Principles?
The document lays out seven principles, organized sequentially to walk users through the full lifecycle of a climate data analysis. Each principle includes a plain-language description of what to do, paired with an “Important Considerations” callout that goes deeper into the rationale, background, and do’s and don’ts:
- Scope and identify needs
- Catalog available data
- Screen available datasets against requirements
- Assess credibility of data
- Sub-select data
- Analyze data and summarize results
- Evaluation and document the analysis
The principles are meant to be flexible rather than prescriptive. Users can enter, exit, or reorder steps based on their own content, and the process is designed to be iterative. The guidance is broadly applicable across sectors and use cases, though it is noted that specific applications will often require deeper, more nuanced treatment of individual principles. This guidance focuses on choosing and analyzing climate data; it does not cover downstream analyses like climate risk or health impact assessments.
This work was developed by Kripa Jagannathan, Nancy Freitas, Victoria Ford, Will Krantz, Justine Bui, Owen Doherty, and Andrew Jones, with support through the Electric Program Investment Charge (EPIC), administered by the California Energy Commission under the auspices of the California Public Utilities Commission.