Next-generation climate simulations generate petabytes of data, posing significant challenges for researchers and non-scientists alike due to unwieldy formats, massive volumes, and data complexity. The Cal-Adapt: Analytics Engine addresses this by providing an open-source, cloud-native platform that enhances accessibility and usability of climate projections for California. Traditional climate data workflows often involve downloading terabytes of data for localized, sometimes proprietary processing to achieve insights. The AE platform supports the transformation of foundational climate and environmental data into actionable information by offering data hosting, compute power, and a transparent coding environment on the cloud. Through this research we aim to advance the democratization and utility of cloud-native geospatial applications to pursue collaborative open science, with the knowledge that we must build capacity at the academic level to support both the technical and analytical skills required to fully leverage these approaches.