This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: California's Central Coast is headed toward more climate extremes, with hotter days, stronger storms and more intense droughts. That's a major finding of the Central Coast report of California's Fifth Climate Assessment, led in part by researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and part of a statewide effort to build a scientific foundation for understanding climate-related vulnerability.
The report brings together the best climate science projections for the mid-21st century and examines how they may impact the region's natural, built and social systems, and may serve as a tool for future resource management and climate planning. This is particularly important on the Central Coast, which is an understudied region of the state and the most heavily dependent on groundwater. Despite projections for alarming climate trends, this report also highlights the increase in climate change mitigation and adaptation measures since the last statewide climate report in 2018.
It covers four main areas: climate, natural and working lands, built environments, and social science. "There is a lot of adaptation going on," said Ruth Langridge, the report's coordinating lead author and a researcher in politics and legal studies at UC Santa Cruz. "We're seeing a lot of nature-based solutions to try to figure out what to do about the coastal storms, and we're seeing a lot of new water conservation, recycling and recharge.
There is a lot of positive action, and the report is very focused on what's happening right here, on the ground, and how we can better adapt to those impacts." Langridge led the Central Coast report alongside Nathan Von Schmidt, the director of regional strategies at the San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory, and Eloy Ortiz, special projects manager at the Watsonville-based climate equity nonprofit Regeneración. They brought together the large group of interdisciplinary scientists that participated in this report and engaged with Indigenous tribes, local communities and nonprofits throughout the region. A total of 20 UC Santa Cruz researchers from the Sciences and Social Sciences divisions contributed to this report.
As part of the larger statewide report, UC Santa Cruz researchers also led the development of CoSMoS Adapts, a tool that provides coastal communities with block-by-block visualizations to evaluate future flooding and erosion risks. The assessment highlights a shift in the Central Coast's weather patterns: hot months are projected to get hotter, while the rainy season gets increasingly shorter. Summer and early fall will see most of the temperature spikes, while spring and fall get drier.
"Temperatures have increased and are projected to increase even more. That's a really big deal, because precipitation hasn't changed that much," Langridge said. "But with a lot of heat, you get a lot of evaporation, and so that's gonna create a much drier situation—that's what the real impact is." Rain is projected to come in more intense bursts, with January and February as the wettest months.
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