Property Prices in Peril

First Street | February 3rd, 2025

Regional desirability is being reshaped by chronic changes in climate across the country: coastal areas are increasingly threatened by sea level rise, while inland region

Regional desirability is being reshaped by chronic changes in climate across the country: coastal areas are increasingly threatened by sea level rise, while inland regions face intensifying heat waves, droughts, and floods. At the same time, the increased frequency and intensity of natural disasters has triggered unprecedented levels of property damage, prompting insurance providers to increase premiums or withdraw coverage from high-risk areas altogether. Chronic climate changes create additional financial burdens – from surging utility bills to increased maintenance costs. Ultimately, environmental stressors and associated rising homeownership costs are together reshaping home values. With residential real estate representing one of the largest economic sectors in the country, these shifts will result in serious impacts that ripple through communities. Understanding these dynamics is crucial as public and private stakeholders navigate an increasingly complex landscape where housing decisions must balance traditional location value drivers with new climate realities.

Quantifying Aspect-Dependent Snowpack Response to High-Elevation Wildfire in the Southern Rocky Mountains

American Geophysical Union (AGU) | September 17th, 2024

Quantifying the impacts of rainfall and evaporation on Lake Bonneville

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) | January 1st, 2026

Improved understanding of hydroclimatic drivers in water-stressed regions enables more accurate forecasting of future climate change impacts. Lake Bonneville was the larg

Improved understanding of hydroclimatic drivers in water-stressed regions enables more accurate forecasting of future climate change impacts. Lake Bonneville was the largest Pleistocene lake in western North America, with a maximum surface area of ~52,000 km2, before shrinking markedly to become the modern Great Salt Lake. After more than a century of study, the balance between enhanced precipitation and reduced evaporation as drivers of lake growth continues to be debated. Multiple studies identify precipitation as the main factor associated with the highest lake levels, but most proxies provide an estimate of net evaporation and cannot independently resolve precipitation from evaporation. Therefore, factors associated with lake size, growth, and retreat remain uncertain. This study uses the thermodynamically based carbonate clumped isotope geothermometer to estimate temperature, evaporation, and precipitation at Lake Bonneville from 23 to 16 thousand years ago (ka). Clumped isotope derived constraints on hydroclimate are also applied to assess the accuracy of regional climate model outputs. During transgressive and open phases of the lake, we find that regional and large-scale precipitation delivery were the driving factors of lake expansion. In contrast, at its maximum extent (~17.5 ka), Lake Bonneville was maintained via suppressed evaporation rates at 50% relative to modern while precipitation rates were similar to modern levels.

Quantifying the influence of global warming on unprecedented extreme climate events

National Academy of Sciences (NAS) | April 24th, 2017

Efforts to understand the influence of historical global warming on individual extreme climate events have increased over the past decade. However, despite substa

Efforts to understand the influence of historical global warming on individual extreme climate events have increased over the past decade. However, despite substantial progress, events that are unprecedented in the local observational record remain a persistent challenge. Leveraging observations and a large climate model ensemble, we quantify uncertainty in the influence of global warming on the severity and probability of the historically hottest month, hottest day, driest year, and wettest 5-d period for different areas of the globe. We find that historical warming has increased the severity and probability of the hottest month and hottest day of the year at >80% of the available observational area. Our framework also suggests that the historical climate forcing has increased the probability of the driest year and wettest 5-d period at 57% and 41% of the observed area, respectively, although we note important caveats. For the most protracted hot and dry events, the strongest and most widespread contributions of anthropogenic climate forcing occur in the tropics, including increases in probability of at least a factor of 4 for the hottest month and at least a factor of 2 for the driest year. We also demonstrate the ability of our framework to systematically evaluate the role of dynamic and thermodynamic factors such as atmospheric circulation patterns and atmospheric water vapor, and find extremely high statistical confidence that anthropogenic forcing increased the probability of record-low Arctic sea ice extent.

Quantifying the role of atmospheric rivers in the interior western United States

Royal Meteorological Society (RMS) | July 13th, 2012

Atmospheric rivers (ARs) have increasingly been recognized for their contribution to high-impact weather and climate variability. A recent investigation based on observat

Atmospheric rivers (ARs) have increasingly been recognized for their contribution to high-impact weather and climate variability. A recent investigation based on observations located primarily in lowland valleys and basins of the western United States suggests that 10 – 50% of the total cool season (November to April) precipitation between water years 1998 and 2008 occurred on the day of and day following AR landfall (hereafter the AR fraction), as identified using  Special Sensor Microwave Imager data. However, these results are based only on ARs crossing the North American west coast between 32.5◦N and 52.5◦N, which excludes those crossing the west coast of the Baja Peninsula. Here, we identify ARs in the ERA-Interim reanalysis and examine the AR fraction at high-elevation observational sites and in the NOAA/CPC Unified Daily Precipitation Analysis. At high-elevation snowpack telemetry sites, we find good agreement with the AR fraction obtained previously for valley and basin locations. We also show that including ARs crossing the west coast of the Baja Peninsula (as far south as 24◦N) substantially increases the AR fraction over the southwestern United States

Rainfall intensification amplifies exposure of American Southwest to conditions that trigger postfire debris flows

Nature Portfolio (Springer Nature) | June 7th, 2024

Rapid emergence of climate change in environmental drivers of marine ecosystems

Nature Portfolio (Springer Nature) | March 7th, 2017

Climate change is expected to modify ecological responses in the ocean, with the potential for important effects on the ecosystem services provided to humankind

Climate change is expected to modify ecological responses in the ocean, with the potential for important effects on the ecosystem services provided to humankind. Here we address the question of how rapidly multiple drivers of marine ecosystem change develop in the future ocean. By analysing an ensemble of models we find that, within the next 15 years, the climate change-driven trends in multiple ecosystem drivers emerge from the background of natural variability in 55% of the ocean and propagate rapidly to encompass 86% of the ocean by 2050 under a ‘business-as-usual’ scenario. However, we also demonstrate that the exposure of marine ecosystems to climate change-induced stress can be drastically reduced via climate mitigation measures; with mitigation, the proportion of ocean susceptible to multiple drivers within the next 15 years is reduced to 34%. Mitigation slows the pace at which multiple drivers emerge, allowing an additional 20 years for adaptation in marine ecological and socio-economic systems alike.

Rapid progression of ocean acidification in the California current system

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) | June 14th, 2012

Nearshore waters of the California Current System (California CS) already today have a low carbonate saturation state, making them particularly susceptible to o

Nearshore waters of the California Current System (California CS) already today have a low carbonate saturation state, making them particularly susceptible to ocean acidification. Here, we use eddy-resolving model simulations to study the potential development of ocean acidification in this system up to 2050 under the SRES A2 and B1 scenarios. In both scenarios, the saturation state of aragonite Ωaragis projected to drop rapidly, with much of the nearshore regions developing summer-long undersaturation in the top 60 m within the next 30 years. By the year 2050, waters with Ωarag above 1.5 have largely disappeared and more than half of the waters are undersaturated year-round. Habitats along the seafloor become exposed to year-round undersaturation within the next 20 to 30 years. This has potentially major implications for the rich and diverse ecosystem that characterizes the California CS.

Rapid vegetation redistribution in Southern California during the early 2000s drought

American Geophysical Union (AGU) | August 31st, 2012

Climate change in semi-arid, midlatitude mountain environments is expected to shift the spatial patterns of temperature, water availability, and vegetation upslope. Veg

Climate change in semi-arid, midlatitude mountain environments is expected to shift the spatial patterns of temperature, water availability, and vegetation upslope. Vegetation growing near its low-elevation range limit may prove especially vulnerable to mortality and decline. We investigated the altitudinal pattern of conifer mortality that occurred from 2002 to 2004 in Southern California’s San Jacinto Mountains. We found that conifer mortality was focused in the lower portion of the midmontane conifer range, which drove the midmontane conifer distribution upslope. We investigated past reports of conifer mortality in Southern California by searching historical newspaper accounts. We found evidence of previous episodes of conifer mortality that coincided with past droughts, and which may have caused vegetation redistribution in the past. We interpret the early2000s mortality and associated vegetation redistribution as a response to natural decadal tocentennial climate variability. Moreover, we hypothesize this response mode will dominatethe early impact of global climate change on semi-arid forest, which, in turn, may complicate efforts to distinguish between ecological changes attributable to natural climate variability and those attributable to global climate change.

Re-Oaking North Bay: A strategy for restoring native oak ecosystems, focusing on Napa and Sonoma valleys

San Francisco Estuary Institute (SFEI) | July 7th, 2020

Oaks are iconic trees in California, the defining feature of savannas and woodlands in many parts of the state. For millennia, these majestic trees have provided the e

Oaks are iconic trees in California, the defining feature of savannas and woodlands in many parts of the state. For millennia, these majestic trees have provided the ecological foundation upon which thousands of other organisms depend. Their cultural significance is equally profound: they are of central importance to diverse indigenous groups, and are prized for the many benefits they provide California residents. Vast expanses of oak savanna historically occupied the rich alluvial soils of Napa and Sonoma valleys. The immense and long-lived valley oak (Quercus lobata) dominated these savannas, accounting for more than 65% of trees (Dawson 2008, Grossinger et al. 2012). Early observers described the valleys as “studded with groups of oaks” (Marryat 1850), and extolled the “magnificent oaks” that were “the glory of the landscape scenery” (Smith and Elliott 1878). Black oak (Q. kelloggii), coast live oak (Q. agrifolia), and other oak species were present in smaller numbers on the valley floors and were more abundant in the hillsides (Dawson 2008, Grossinger et al. 2012). Over the past two centuries, however, much of this oak savanna has been cleared to make way for orchards, vineyards, and towns. In Napa Valley, the number of mature trees has declined from an estimated 45,000 in the early 1800s to less than 1,000 today (Grossinger et al. 2012). Valley oak habitat has been particularly affected by clearing and fragmentation: in many areas of the state, loss of valley oak woodland exceeds 90% (Kelly et al. 2005, Whipple et al. 2011). Documentation of this loss, and recognition of the value of oaks for both people and nature, has led to a growing desire to restore this unique ecosystem and bring back many of the benefits that oaks provide. Despite the significant changes the North Bay landscape has experienced since European settlement, there are opportunities to restore oaks in settings as diverse as backyards, parks, streets, farms, vineyards, and creeksides.