/ Asheville is the center of the climate data universe.
Five years ago, entrepreneur and philanthropist Mack Pearsall thought he had discovered Asheville’s path to great wealth and world acclaim. Not through its beer; not because of its natural amenities.
Rather, in this time of global climate concern, the 84-year-old descendent of a pioneering North Carolina family believed Asheville could prosper by monetizing a unique yet little-known asset: Its federal archive of climate and weather data the largest such collection among all the nations on Earth curated by a local talent bank that includes several Nobel laureates and scores of climate scientists.