From NetCDF to Insights: A Practical Pipeline for City-Level Climate Risk Analysis

A practical data pipeline is presented to transform raw, high-dimensional climate data from NetCDF files into actionable city-level risk insights. The workflow integrates CMIP6 and ERA5 data to define localized extreme heat thresholds and engineer features like wet-bulb temperature for more accurate human stress assessment. Simplified epidemiological and economic models are then applied to translate climate anomalies into interpretable metrics such as excess mortality and economic loss. The importance of this data engineering approach is highlighted through a case study contrasting two cities with different climate baselines, demonstrating how to bridge the gap between complex climate science and policy-making.