Kevin Schwarzwald

BIOGRAPHY:

Kevin Schwarzwald is a PhD Student at the IRI and Columbia’s Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences. Schwarzwald holds a BA in physics and public policy from the University of Chicago and a Master of Law in China Studies from Peking University's Yenching Academy (how promotion pressures on local officials encourage inefficient urban expansion in smaller cities in China).

At Columbia, Schwarzwald focuses on understanding uncertainties and biases in climate data and how they affect calculations made with them, particularly when projecting the impacts of climate change. Recent projects include a process-based evaluation of CMIP6 models in East Africa and work on identifying the sources of climate uncertainty in projections of the impacts of climate change in the Continental United States. Schwarzwald is also the lead developer of xagg, a python package to aggregate raster data (like weather and climate datasets) onto polygons (like administrative areas). 

Prior to his work at the IRI, Schwarzwald focused on climate projections for economic and policy uses and has been involved with climate and policy work in Europe, America, and Africa. Schwarzwald is also the co-founder of NENSIC, an interdisciplinary network for young researchers working in climate and environmental issues from any angle.