The World Bank / Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR)

Terms of Reference

Climate Data Scientist (Extreme Heat Focus)

Context and Objective

Exposure to extreme heat is increasing in cities across the world. Heat stress is associated with
adverse health outcomes, crime, violence, increased energy consumption, labor productivity loss
and reduced educational attainment. Low-income and elderly people are among the most affected
groups. Established in 2006, the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR)
is a global partnership program housed within the World Bank which plays a leading role to
advance disaster risk management and climate change adaptation globally. Working with World
Bank urban sector teams, GFDRR has a work program providing analytical support to city and
national authorities that are addressing urban heat exposure, as well as supporting the design and
implementation of mitigation measures. This business line has experienced rapid growth as
intensifying heat stress prompts cities and regions globally to step up their action on extreme heat
preparedness and mitigation. The selected candidate will bring specialized domain knowledge at
the intersection of climate science and urban planning and will play a key role delivering on the
team’s work program including through data analysis, client engagement and partnership
development. The position sits within the City Resilience Program and Digital Earth Partnership
teams of GFDRR.

Scope of Work
The consultant will join the extreme heat in cities team at GFDRR as a core team member. The
assignment will be for an initial four-month period, during which the key expected tasks and
outputs are listed below. The assignment may be extended subject to strong performance.

Expected initial tasks (first 4 months):

(i) Applied urban climate analysis (40%). The extreme heat team at GFDRR acts as a specialized
technical partner working with World Bank Task Team Leaders to help deliver high-quality
studies, modeling exercises, data collection efforts, workshops, and other technical support
offerings to their clients. Examples of past engagements range from community-based data
collection efforts in South Africa and the Western Balkans to assessment of extreme heat impacts
and prioritization of responses in European and South Asian countries as well as a flagship study
on extreme heat mitigation in East Asian cities. The consultant will support the further
development of this work program by acting as a core team member for delivery of technical
assistance and advisory engagements. Acting as a knowledge partner for World Bank team leaders
in urban development and other World Bank Global Practices, the consultant will contribute across
the phases of the project cycle, including problem definition and scoping of data analysis
engagements; evaluating, selecting and acquiring datasets; conducting data analysis; developing
key findings and conclusions; contributing to report writing; supporting the recruitment and
supervision of external vendors; conducting technical dialogue with project stakeholders; and
developing presentation materials including publication-quality maps, figures and slides.
(ii) Compendium of datasets and tools (20%). The consultant will compile a listing of datasets
and tools that are useful to city staff developing responses to extreme heat and to World Bank
urban specialists and economists conducting heat-related technical assistance. The following
categories should be included:

Category Example Key considerations

Datasets
Extreme heat and UHE-Global Identify datasets on monthly climatology of cities; historic
urban climate WorldClim heatwave incidence; modeled estimates of hot-humid
datasets (historical) ERA-5 conditions (eg. WBGT); estimates of UHI intensity for
cities; and weather station / climate reanalysis datasets.
Extreme heat datasets CMIP-6 Include Global Climate Model output. Prioritize identifying
(projected) processed datasets that are reliable and easy-to-use.
Remote sensing data Landsat Identify and evaluate utility of satellite imagery products
such as Land Surface Temperature; aim to identify best
recent improvements upon LandSat-based LST.
Urban-scale land WorldCover Identify best land cover datasets for vegetation, sealed
cover World Settlement surface and building fraction. Identify Local Climate Zone
Footprint datasets.
Population datasets WorldPop Include historical/present population and estimates of future
population under SSP scenarios
Tools
Code libraries: HotSpell Identify tools in Python and R
extreme heat focus heatwaveR
Urban climate UMEP Prioritize identifying open-source tools for UHI and thermal
modeling software ENVI-Met comfort mapping
Web tools Extreme Weather Identify web tools, highlight their value-added.
Toolkit (Climate
Central)
Google Environmental
Insights Explorer

The consultant should develop a suitable format to compile and present the findings, ensuring that
key characteristics are recorded for each dataset (eg. spatial and temporal coverage, applications,
web address, format and easiest access modality) and tool (eg. applications, web address, use
cases). Outputs from this work will include the compendium, a short summary note, and a
presentation. All outputs should be crafted with the end goal of helping the team identify and curate
the best existing data and tool resources to promote effective data-driven responses to extreme heat
in cities. This activity will be undertaken through web-based research, review of scientific journal
articles, and outreach to selected partners (eg. by email). Subject to the skill-set of the selected
candidate, this activity may be extended to piloting use of selected open-source software tools for
urban climate assessment in the context of World Bank engagements.

(iii) Heat wave scripts: event catalogue and trends analysis (20%). The consultant will develop
a small suite of data science tools to automate the production of basic information on the historical
incidence of heatwaves in cities. The scripts may later be expanded to a wider set of tools. At this
stage, the following functionality is required:
• Automate the production of heat wave event catalogues for cities. An event catalogue is a
list of past events including their start and end dates and key characteristics.
 • Create tables and charts showing change in heat wave frequency, intensity, season length,
and duration over past decades for cities. The scripts should allow for creating these metrics
based on a user-selected heat wave definition.

The consultant will develop the required set of scripts in Python or R and implement the analysis
for selected cities (including cities in Africa and Southeast Europe). The scripts should
accommodate the use of local weather station data where available or otherwise through climate
reanalysis data (eg. ERA5). Outputs from this work: (i) scripts in the form of well-organized,
annotated code notebooks hosted on the GFDRR GitHub site; (ii) basic documentation for the
scripts including a flowchart; (iii) summary Powerpoint presentation to the GFDRR team with
heatwave event identification and trends analysis for the selected cities.

(iv) Program and partnership development (10%). The consultant will support the team’s work
planning process and partnership development including through identification of and outreach to
academic and non-governmental organization partners.

Requirements
Domain knowledge
• Essential: Training in physical and/or social sciences related to climate change (PhD
advantageous)
• Desirable: Specialist knowledge of the scientific literature on urban climates (including the
urban heat island effect)
• Desirable: Relevant publications record.

Data science skills

• Essential: Advanced knowledge of Python and/or R
• Desirable: Experience working with climate data in NetCDF, GRIB, CSV and GeoTiff
formats
• Desirable: Experience of computational methods applied to modeling of urban climates.

Competencies
• Excellent communication skills (written & spoken)
• Track record of innovation and delivering substantial work products to high-level
audiences

Position details
The selected candidate will be offered a contract as a World Bank Short Term Consultant (STC),
situated within GFDRR and reporting to Nicholas Jones. The position may be remotely based or
situated in Washington DC subject to existing visa and work eligibility. The selected candidate
will be paid a daily fee according to the World Bank’s consultant remuneration scale for an initial
50 days (extendable to 150 days per year). Interested candidates should send a CV and expression
of interest to njones@worldbank.org by January 10, 2024.
Annex 1: Suggested Work Flow for Heatwave Scripts

Step in Workflow Requirements

1A: Data acquisition (route A – weather station data)
Acquire and inspect weather
station data
Clean and prepare data
1B: Data acquisition (route B – reanalysis data)
Acquire and inspect reanalysis • Access climate reanalysis data from selected source (eg. Climate
data
Clean and prepare data
2: Identify heat waves
Identify heat waves
3: Report and visualize findings
Visualize historical
temperature record for the
city
Summarize identified heat
waves
Output heat wave event
catalogue
• Access and inspect historical weather station data from WMO-
accredited weather stations for selected city location using Meteostat
or a similar API tool.
• Visualize temperature and humidity data to allow visual inspection
of trends and completeness.
• Perform data cleaning steps including handling missing values.
• Crop the data to user-defined time period.
• Data should be formatted in tabular form (eg. as a Pandas
DataFrame) with columns representing climate variables (eg. Tmax,
Tmin, Tavg, RH) and rows representing time intervals (eg. days).
Change Knowledge Portal, WorldClim) for selected city location.
• Perform necessary data cleaning and preparation steps.
• Data should be formatted in tabular form (eg. as a Pandas
DataFrame) with columns representing climate variables (eg. Tmax,
Tmin, Tavg, RH) and rows representing time intervals (eg. days).
• Identify heat waves based on user-specific choice of heat wave
definition (see Box 1). Where necessary this will include use of
rolling windows, eg. to identify N-day periods where Tmean > given
threshold1.
• Produce basic summary statistics including monthly climatology
chart, identification of percentile temperature values, and heat map
charts.
• Produce charts and tables to summarize the identified heat waves,
including:
o trends in heatwave occurrence over time (eg. yearly number
of heatwaves, yearly number of heatwave days, and length
of longest yearly heatwave – see Figure 1)
o comparison of heatwave frequency and intensity between
heatwave definitions
• Output the heat wave event catalogue in CVS format

1
Note: The scripts may u2lize exis2ng code libraries such as Hotspell or HeatwaveR or implement the func2onality directly.
Annex 2: Heat wave metrics to be included

Heat wave definitions to be included

Warm spell duration index: Annual count of days with at least 6 consecutive days when TX >
90th percentile
Hot days: Number of days where Tmax > 35°C
Hot days (event): Number of days where Tmax > 35°C, at least 3 days
Hot nights (event): Number of days where Tmin > 25°C, at least 3 days
TN90P: Number of days where Tmin > 90th percentile, at least 3 days
TX90P: Number of days where Tmax > 90th percentile, at least 3 days

Annex 3: Example metrics of heat wave frequency, duration, season length and intensity

Source: https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-heat-waves