I am an environmental economist at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). I am affiliated with CEEP, the Climate School, and the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA). From 2023 to 2024, I was a Senior Advisor in the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). I study how forecasts and other types of information affect actions in settings including adaptation to climate change, risk-taking in research, and time use. These days, I am especially fascinated by how people perceive and use weather forecasts—a decades-long information intervention going on every hour of the day, all around the world.

Contact information

Jeffrey Shrader
Associate Professor
Columbia University, SIPA

jgs2103@columbia.edu
Office hours: Mondays 9 to 10, IAB 1430A or Thursdays 11 to noon on Zoom (click here to book)

Latest news and updates

2026-04-13

New paper in PNAS, joint with the wonderful Sustainable Development PhD student Stephan Thies as well as the usual suspects on my weather forecast work (Derek, Laura, Manuel). Headline findings: More accurate weather forecasts save lives, especially during extreme heat. Continued improvements in short-range temperature forecasts could reduce heat-related mortality in the U.S. by ~20% by the end of the century. That would offset nearly all of the increase in deaths under moderate climate change. But this is also “running to stay in place”: without climate change, these same improvements would lead to substantial declines in heat-related mortality. Surveyed operational meteorologists expect forecasts to keep improving, and realizing those improvements will require sustained investment in weather data and model development (including AI models).

2026-03-30

Manuel Linsenmeier and I have a new piece in VoxDev on global inequalities in weather forecasts. As we say in the piece, “Weather forecasts in low-income countries are about 20 years behind those in high-income countries, worsening economic losses and increasing vulnerability to climate-related risks.” We also offer some thoughts on how to make this situation better!

2026-03-11

Lots of work on the economics of climate change has sought to estimate climate change damage. As long as these estimates have been produced, there has been a debate about whether we should expect actual damages to be larger or smaller than the estimates. A common argument that actual damages should be smaller comes from folks focused on *adaptation*---the actions people take to prepare for or adjust to a changing climate. (...more)

2026-02-26

I was interviewed for Signals of Change. Check out the episode here. We talk about climate adaptation, weather forecasts, and what environmental economists can do to better understand climate change impacts.

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