Celebrating The End of Fall Semester!

The lab wrapped up this socially distanced semester with a high-stakes trivia night hosted by Research Analyst Emma Krasovich and her partner, Alan. Their new initiative, aeroTRIV, aims to connect teammates and coworkers through virtual game nights and raises money for nonprofit organizations in the process.

Despite increasingly close competition, Team 5, Santa’s First Dose, ultimately prevailed. They opted to give to the National Immigration Law Center, Communities for a Better Environment, and the Berkeley Food Network.

We had a blast!! Way to go, everyone!

Bolliger Coauthors AGU Paper

Ian Bolliger, a former GPL Fellow and current climate data scientist at the Rhodium Group, has coauthored a paper recently published in Water Resources Research, published by the American Geophysical Union.

The paper models and analyzes present-day flood hazards across the United States as well as in 2035 and 2050, per the RCP4.5 pathway, allowing for a comprehensive estimate of flood risk across all properties in the contiguous United States.

Quantitative Sustainable Dev. Project Contributes to UNDP Report

GPL’s Quantitative Sustainable Development Project provided input on the United Nations Development Programme’s 2020 Human Development Report.

Project Manager Jeanette Tseng and Postdoc Kendon Bell wrote about the importance of valuing natural resource assets and impacts of the environment on economic outcomes. Their contributions are spotlighted on page 218 of the UNDP report.

Aerial History Project Receives Bank of Sweden Grant

GPL’s Aerial History Project has received a $6.2M grant from the Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation), in conjunction with a research team led by Andreas Madestam and Anna Tompsett of Stockholm University.

This project, titled A new approach to measuring the wealth of nations: understanding long-run economic growth using historical aerial photographs, has been several years in the making, with GPL Fellows Hannah Druckenmiller (ARE), Luna Yue Huang (ARE), and Project Manager Trinetta Chong (GSPP ‘16) at the helm. Six UC Berkeley undergraduates/MPP students also contributed significantly, including Alex Gao ‘20 and Tommy Poa ‘20.

The team is thrilled to have received this recognition and are excited to keep this endeavor moving forward.

Hsiang Presents at SF Fed

Sol presented “Valuing the Global Mortality Consequences of Climate Change” at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco this Thursday, as part of the bank’s Virtual Seminar on Climate Economics.

The paper and recording are both available to access on the SF Fed website here.

Welcome new GSRs!

The lab is excited to welcome five Graduate Student Researchers this semester.

Nick Depsky, a 4th year PhD from the Energy & Resources Group, joined this summer and is working on the coastal impacts of climate change. He received his B.S in Hydrology and Water Resources from the University of California, Davis and worked for the Stockholm Environment Institute and the Nature Conservancy before coming to UC Berkeley.

Luke Sherman, Alex Singal, and Jessica Katz are Master’s students in the Goldman School of Public Policy and the Energy & Resources Group. Taryn Fransen is a 3rd year PhD in the Energy & Resources Group. They will be working on a variety of projects, ranging from biodiversity analysis to machine learning.

Hultgren to UChicago Postdoc

Congratulations to Andrew Hultgren, who completed his PhD in Agricultural and Resource Economics (ARE) with the dissertation “Facing an Altered Future: Essays on the Economic Impacts of Climate Change and Adaptation”.

His next destination will be as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Chicago, working with Professor Michael Greenstone.

It’s been a pleasure, Andy! We’ll miss you!!

Bolliger to Rhodium Group

Congratulations to Ian Bolliger, who completed his PhD in the Energy & Resources Group (ERG) with his dissertation, “Estimating global policy impacts in unprecedented contexts with interdisciplinary econometric approaches”.

He’ll now be a climate data scientist with the Rhodium Group, a global research firm with offices in New York City, Paris, Hong Kong, Oakland, and Asheville, NC.

We’re thrilled for Ian and hope he’ll return to visit the lab often (Downtown Oakland isn’t too far from our stomping grounds!)

Doctoral Fellow Applications Now Open

If you’re interested in becoming a fellow at the Global Policy Lab, please fill out the application here. We will be accepting submissions until September 1st. (You will need to be logged into your berkeley.edu email for access.)

If you’d like to learn more and see what our lab members have been up to lately, check out this page.

Bloomberg Covers NBER Mortality Paper

Bloomberg and other news outlets have released coverage of Sol and the Climate Impact Lab’s recent paper on climate change and mortality.

Summary:

Communities are already experiencing a changing climate as temperature extremes become a familiar trend around the globe. How much is temperature to blame when hospital visits increase during heat waves and cold spells? What role do adaptations like indoor heating and cooling systems play in blunting these effects? And, at what cost?

Empirical evidence of the risks extreme temperatures pose to human health is limited since fatalities often come from periods of heat or cold that worsen underlying conditions. Individual deaths are rarely attributed to temperature surges, so public health officials and policymakers often invest less in addressing and responding to climate change. The answers to these questions would inform policymakers, city planners, business leaders, and a range of stakeholders who are preparing to mitigate and adapt as the climate becomes more unstable.

An overview of their research can be accessed here. An interactive map of the study results can be found here.

Welcome Visiting Student Researcher Kelton!

The lab is excited to introduce Kelton Minor, a PhD student at the University of Copenhagen, who will be spending the year working with the Global Policy Lab as a VSR. He previously spent a year in Denmark as a Fulbright Research Fellow, and received his MSc and BSc in Human Environment Relations from Cornell University.

His work centers around climate and mobility, and he is looking forward to doing research and engaging with the lab virtually (and hopefully in person, someday).

Hsiang Awarded GSA President's Medal

Congratulations to Sol, who is honored to have received this annual award by the Geological Society of America.

The medal is given in recognition of individuals, groups, or entities whose impact has profoundly enhanced the geoscience profession through supporting and contributing to the Society; by advancing geosciences, enhancing professional growth, and/or promoting geosciences in service of humankind; and/or significantly enlarging the range of scientific achievement for the growth of our profession.

Thank you and congratulations to all the GSA awardees!

First Street Foundation Publishes GPL Flood Data

First Street Foundation, a nonprofit based in New York City, has published their national flood risk assessment with the assistance of the members of our team. This is the first comprehensive analysis of flooding risks throughout the United States, and represents an update from FEMA’s earlier models.

Ian Bolliger, Daniel Allen, Sol Hsiang and other lab members worked to produce a geospatial analysis of what future flooding would look like in residential areas and how homes and businesses would be affected.

Coverage can be found in the New York Times.

Hsiang Awarded 2020 Carnegie Fellowship

Along with 26 other distinguished scholars and researchers, Sol Hsiang was awarded a two-year fellowship by the Carnegie Corporation,

This generous award will support research efforts on using machine learning to categorize historical airplane photos of Caribbean islands and assemble remote sensing data prior to Landsat technology.

Congratulations to Sol and the Aerial Photos team!

Proctor wins AAEA Dissertation Award

Congratulations to Jonathan Proctor, who has been awarded the Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award by the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association for 2020!

His dissertation, The Value of Light: Crop Response to Optical Scattering and Generalizable Earth Observation, examines the spectral distribution, directionality, and quantity of sunlight in association with human activity, lending insights into agriculture and productivity.