| “Our goal was to make the information transparent and easily accessible by users.” | |
| Tony Brunello, California Natural Resources Agency | |
Since many effects of climate change may not be seen for decades, it can be challenging for coastal resource managers to illustrate the coming impacts on coastal communities. A new online tool developed by California resource managers is showing residents and decision makers how warming temperatures, rising sea levels, precipitation shifts, and more frequent, intense wildfires could impact their environment.
“This ability to access information and data about estimated changes in climate at the local levels by simply selecting a given region in California is an extremely powerful tool for decision makers,” says Tony Brunello, deputy secretary for climate change and energy in the California Natural Resources Agency.
CalAdapt—which is still in the prototype stage—isn’t a forecaster but rather is an electronic way to visualize the possible effects of climate change using current scientific data. The tool, which uses a Google Earth platform, allows users to view interactive maps showing such things as the shrinking snowpack along the Sierra Nevada, and how a rise in sea level could submerge parts of San Francisco.
“Somebody doing a general plan for any town in California can go in and see the data that is being used, and what impacts are considered in their areas,” Brunello says. “It’s a whole new way of communicating research.”
CalAdapt grew out of efforts to coordinate the state’s first climate adaptation strategy, Brunello says. “When we went to find out what maps were available, we realized we didn’t have the information we needed… Our goal was to make the information transparent and easily accessible by users.”
Discussions with Google led to the idea and development of CalAdapt, he says. Researchers at several California universities helped take state-specific research, data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2007 report, and projections from global climate change models and translate them for the tool’s 7 by 7 kilometer radius.
The beta version of the tool was released last summer alongside the 2009 California Climate Adaptation Strategy. A more robust, easier-to-use version of the tool will go live by the end of 2010.
Although California worked with a consultant to create CalAdapt, Brunello believes “any state could take their science and put it in Google Earth and share it with the world. Google has set it up so that anyone can do that.”
“What would be ideal,” he notes, “would be for NOAA or some other federal agency to create a common platform for downscaling global climate models so that everyone can easily access them.”
Brunello adds, “I’m convinced that this is the way science communication is going to evolve. Any tool that can get information out in ways people can utilize on the ground is absolutely necessary.”
To view CalAdapt, go to www.climatechange.ca.gov/visualization/. For more information on California’s climate change adaptation strategy, go to www.climatechange.ca.gov/adaptation/. You may also contact Tony Brunello at (916) 653-5672, or Tony.Brunello@resources.ca.gov.
