Computational Climate Change: How Data Science and Numerical Models Can Help Build Good Climate Policies and Practices

Abstract

Computational social science can help advance climate policy and help solve the climate crises. To do so, several steps need to be overcome to make the best use of the wealth of data and variety of models available to evaluate climate change policies. Here, we review the state of the art of numerical modelling and data science methods applied to policy evaluation. We emphasize that significant progress has been made but that critical social and economic phenomena-especially related to climate justice-are not yet fully captured and thus limit the predictivity and usefulness of computational approaches. We posit that the integration of statistical and numerical approaches is key to developing a new impact evaluation science that overcomes the traditional divide between ex ante and ex post approaches.