Paloma Aguirre will represent San Diego County on the California Coastal Commission with a focus on equitable access to the coast.
The Imperial Beach mayor will serve the remainder of former Commissioner Steve Padilla’s term, which expires May 2025. Padilla, a former Chula Vista council member, is now serving in the Legislature.
Every winter, Imperial Beach finds some of its streets and sidewalks underwater. This week, researchers from San Diego State and UC San Diego started digging groundwater wells to see how sea-level rise plays a role in that flooding. The sea-level impacts how shallow the water table is underneath the city.
“Flooding overall is a very, very big thing in Imperial Beach,” said Hassan Davani, Ph.D.
The SDSU researcher said most studies predict sea-level rise will significantly impact California as early as 2050. However, Davani said Imperial Beach can’t wait that long to protect itself.
This happens regularly in the @CityofIB. A study is underway to figure out how to stop flooding in the future, especially if the sea level keeps rising. @nbcsandiego at 4:30 and 6:00. pic.twitter.com/d8cz7ZDERY
— Joe Little🎥🏀 (@LittleJoeTV) December 2, 2021
Guidelines for how cities and local agencies should adapt roads, railways and water systems to accommodate rising seas were unanimously approved Wednesday by the state Coastal Commission.
The 230-page document sets a controversial benchmark by urging communities to prepare for the Pacific Ocean to rise 10 feet by 2100, a projection so far beyond current calculations that climate scientists haven’t yet determined the probability of it occurring.
More than 200 of the world’s leading climate scientists will begin meeting today to finalize a landmark report summarizing how Earth’s climate has already changed, and what humans can expect for the rest of the century.
The report is the sixth edition of an assessment of the latest climate science from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a United Nations body that coordinates research about global warming. The last edition of this report came out in 2013 — an eternity in the world of climate science, where the pace of both warming and research are steadily accelerating.
New climate research, which was done mostly in San Diego, finds that a study of land temperatures during the last ice age confirms some widely held thoughts about climate change.
Lead author Alan Seltzer, a paleoclimatologist at the Wood’s Hole Oceanographic Institute, studied ancient water as a way to gain insight into previously unrecorded planetary temperatures.
The frequency of natural disasters has soared in recent decades. Total damage topped $210 billion worldwide in 2020. With climate change, the costs attributed to coastal storms will increase dramatically.
At the same time, coastal habitats such as wetlands and reefs are being lost rapidly. Some 20% of the world’s mangroves were lost over the last four decades. More than half of the Great Barrier Reef was degraded by bleaching in 2020 alone. In California, we have lost more than 90% of our coastal marshes.
I didn’t see the ocean until I was 18 years old. That late start didn’t stop me from falling in love with the sea, a love I have pursued in earnest ever since I moved to San Diego.
Here in our community, and in communities throughout California, warming waters and rising sea levels threaten both the coast we love and the people and businesses that are located there. Predictions are, that left unchecked, sea level rise will cause billions of dollars in damage in California and disrupt countless lives.
Of all the existential threats California parks face — dwindling budgets, more visitors and costly, long-deferred maintenance — now comes a climate-driven conundrum: When is a park no longer a park? When its namesake trees disappear in a barrage of lightning strikes? When its very land is washed away by ever-rising seas?
An enormous ocean current that flows between continents in a worldwide circuit that can take centuries to complete is slowing down, scientists say. And climate change may be partly to blame.
New research finds that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC — a major ocean system that ferries water and heat between the equator and the poles — is at its weakest point in more than a thousand years.
The City of San Diego Planning Department is seeking public feedback as it develops a climate resilience plan focused on preparing for sea level rise, flooding and drought, extreme heat and wildfires — risks backed up by a climate change vulnerability assessment completed early last year. The Climate Resilient SD plan would build on the city’s Climate Action Plan released in 2015.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
