Category: Science
How Rivers in the Sky Travel Across the Ocean
In California, our fate swings from drought to floods, depending largely on whether or not we get rainstorms called atmospheric rivers.
Betting on Biochar
Rather than entering the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, the carbon in biochar remains as a solid, sequestered and lined up for a host of further uses.
Less Sea Level Rise for Left Coast
Scientists are now more confident we should plan for up to a foot of sea-level rise on the Pacific Coast by 2050 than they were the last time they did the math.
All Stories
How Rivers in the Sky Travel Across the Ocean
In California, our fate swings from drought to floods, depending largely on whether or not we get rainstorms called atmospheric rivers.
Betting on Biochar
Rather than entering the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, the carbon in biochar remains as a solid, sequestered and lined up for a host of further uses.
Less Sea Level Rise for Left Coast
Scientists are now more confident we should plan for up to a foot of sea-level rise on the Pacific Coast by 2050 than they were the last time they did the math.
Burns for the Birds
Scientists examined islands of near-total deforestation after fires and found new landscapes born from the scorched earth. They also found birds hunting for seeds and insects in these new open areas…
What’s in the New Climate Report in Under 3 Minutes
An international climate report has big updates for the world — but it’s thousands of pages long and downright terrifying. So they turned it into a three-minute movie trailer.
Dryer Vents Blow Hot Air & Microplastics
New research confirms that air vents on tumble dryers – rather than washing machines – may be a leading source of microplastic fibers from clothing in the environment. The insidious little particles are being found, among other places, in ocean-caught fish, beer, and even fecal samples of newborn babies.
Global Study Finds Adaptation Progress Local Not Societal
When hundreds of scientists tried to summarize the research on how humans are adapting to climate change, they ran into a big problem: nobody was keeping track.
Coastal Mapping Tool Updated to Include Groundwater
In the past decade sea level rise models have popped up faster than fungi after a storm: today it seems like every agency has one. However in August USGS geologist Patrick Barnard and colleagues at Point Blue Conservation Science unveiled a new feature of their Our Coast, Our Future (OCOF) tool that none of the others have: a projection of how sea level rise will impact local groundwater along the California coast.
Butterflies in Residence Hedge Against Climate Change?
While monarch butterfly numbers at traditional winter roosts on the California coast hit an all-time low of about 2000 last winter, citizen-science observers have noticed that some remain in the San Francisco Bay Area year-round. Biologists Elizabeth Crone (Tufts University) and Cheryl Schulz (Washington State University) estimate a resident population of 12,000 in northern and central California, extrapolating from a Berkeley survey.
Three Ways to Feed the Marsh
Seal Beach is drowning. As a result of sea-level rise, subsidence, and limited sediment supply, much of the 920-acre National Wildlife Refuge in Orange County can no longer keep its head above water. Pacific cordgrass, normally exposed at low tides, is being completely inundated. Rare nesting habitat for the endangered light-footed clapper rail is disappearing at high tides.
Scientists Nail Climate Links to Extreme Events
While a supermajority of Americans finally believe we are warming the world, a 2020 Yale Climate Opinion survey shows that most people still aren’t very worried about it. “Climate change is abstract to them,” says UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain. “They don’t connect it to their personal lives.”
Enough Mud to Fill 670 Skyscrapers?
How much mud do we need to save Bay Area marshes from rising seas and how will we move it into position? If the future is drier there’s one answer, and if it’s wetter another (see chart), but the ballpark is 477,000,000 cubic yards. That’s the amount of sediment needed to sustain the ring of wetlands now protecting shoreline communities and infrastructure from a rising Bay, according to a new SF Estuary Institute report.