Esri’s mapping programs already layer census and income data on top of geographical data. The company has used government data on the projected rise in sea levels to create an interactive map of what will happen, for example, should a hurricane hit the town of Gloucester, Mass. The digital map shows how flooding will affect specific buildings, roads, houses, schools, and low-income and older residents.

White House officials hope that if city planners and homeowners around the country see such vivid digital projections of the impact of climate change in their backyards, it could melt political resistance to climate policy and create a new impetus for action. In 2012 as North Carolina was creating a development plan, the state legislature voted to disregard scientific projections that climate change would cause rising sea levels.

“If people in North Carolina had had this initiative, that decision would have been less likely,” Mr. Holdren told reporters at the White House.

Google also hopes to combine its mapping technology with the government climate data. “What if we could make information about sea-level rise, extreme heat and drought as simple to digest and interactive as using Google Maps to get directions?” said Rebecca Moore, the engineering manager of Google Earth, who was also at the White House. “That is not possible, but we think it’s possible to get a lot closer. There’s the possibility to create a living, breathing dashboard in a way people can understand and relate to.”

White House officials said they hoped to help recreate the success of desktop and mobile apps and software that were built by private companies using government data, like on the real estate sites Trulia, Redfin and Zillow. Those apps use information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau to help buyers make more informed decisions about buying a home.

But the research and projections on climate change are vastly more complex than simple housing, labor and census statistics. Although a number of scientific reports have reached the consensus that carbon pollution from the burning of fossil fuels has warmed the planet — leading to a future of rising sea levels, melting land ice, an increase in the most damaging types of hurricanes, and drought in some places and deluges in others — scientists warn against trying to use that data to model precisely what will happen.

“The essence of dealing with climate change is not so much about identifying specific impacts at a specific time in the future, it’s about managing risk,” Christopher B. Field, the director of the department of global ecology at Stanford University, said in February.