California Coast & Ocean

Late last year, Susanne Moser completed a survey on how coastal managers in California are responding to accelerating sea-level rise. The survey was designed to assist the state in identifying what coastal communities need in order to adapt to impacts of global warming. She has been presenting the results to uneasy audiences ever since. This article is adapted from her talk at the Coastal Commission's Climate Change Workshop on December 14, 2006, in San Francisco.

Let me begin by placing my study into the broader context of what is happening in California. In June 2005, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed Executive Order S-3-05, in which he not only set stringent emission targets, but also asked for regular updates on the state of the science of climate change, how well California is meeting the emission reduction targets, and the status of "mitigation and adaptation plans to combat the [expected] impacts" from climate change. The study we conducted for the state on coastal managers' preparedness for climate change is a direct response to the last part of this request.

According to the latest study conducted for California, sea level is projected to rise by about four to 28 inches over this century. As this occurs, we should expect species and habitat shifts (e.g., wetlands wanting to move inland but being hemmed in by development along the shore, a situation dubbed the "wetland squeeze"). In addition, experts expect changes in coastal storms (including possible changes in storm intensity, frequency, and tracks), increasing coastal erosion, more coastal flooding, and faster cliff retreat. Rainfall and runoff patterns are also expected to change. These changes are not just projections for the future; they are already apparent. For example, more precipitation is already coming as rain rather than as snow in the winter, and as it runs off sooner, coastal communities see both more flooding and longer dry periods with less water available in the summer. This pattern also affects water quality: a heavy storm after a long dry period leads to big runoff, which may be heavily polluted with contaminants from roads and fields; as it runs into coastal streams and the coastal ocean, water pollution problems become more serious. Scientists also expect a rise in coastal water temperatures, which likewise will affect water quality. Less oxygen in the water means less favorable conditions for all marine life that depends on oxygen, and so we may see more fish kills.

It should be noted that these are conservative estimates. The relatively modest sea-level rise projections mentioned above are based on the assumption that the ocean will rise gradually, as ice on land melts down slowly and warming ocean waters expand. But that does not account for more recent science, which says Greenland and West Antarctica may melt down much faster than we thought. Of course, if sea level will rise several times faster than we have witnessed in the past, the types of impacts described above--in some sense already familiar to coastal managers today--will become dramatically worse.

In our study, we examined whether coastal managers in California are aware of these projected changes, and what, if anything, they are doing to prepare their communities to deal with the risks and challenges associated with global warming. While the state has looked at basic adaptation options in various sectors before, ours is the first study to look at actual preparedness "on the ground." It delves into the questions of awareness, attitudes, capacity to use available global warming information, and actions already taken to plan for climate change (or barriers to such action) in California coastal communities. The study was sponsored by the California Energy Commission and California Environmental Protection Agency through a grant to the California Climate Change Center.

The responses we obtained reflect the state of awareness and preparedness in the second half of 2006. While I have done related research in nine other coastal states in the United States, this is the only study to my knowledge that looks at what local coastal managers think about adapting to climate change. In my opinion, these local managers are critical to understanding "real" preparedness, because they are the ones responsible for implementing coastal policies on the ground and thus are at the forefront of preparing for climate change impacts.

Susanne C. Moser, a geographer at the Institute for the Study of Society and Environment, National Center for Atmospheric Research, in Boulder, Colorado, has been researching impacts of climate change for the past 15 years and seeking ways to help policy-makers and managers understand their choices and implement appropriate responses. From 1999 to 2003, she was a staff scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

This article is greatly abridged. For the full text, see the print edition of Coast & Ocean.