Climate Change Blog Posts

Limantour Beach is wide. Bookended by ocean on one side and grassy dunes on the other, its sandy expanse provides a habitat for many organisms that rely on the rich ecosystem between land and sea. The western snowy plover, a small brown and white shorebird, is one species that finds refuge in the sand. Over time, human activity and development have degraded many beaches like Limantour, and biologists have seen those impacts through the eyes of the snowy plovers.

Harbor seals are year-round residents of San Francisco Bay Area waters. But they don't just stay in the water. They also need safe places to come ashore to rest, shed their fur, and raise their young. They “haul out” in several coves, lagoons, and estuaries along the coast, and at many sites within the San Francisco Bay.

The summer sun draws beachgoers to the shore in throngs by day, and the summer moon lures the grunions out by night. These silvery fish, signaled by celestial bodies to spawn from June to August, are making their annual appearance at Crissy Beach in Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

The female elephant seal is ready. It’s early January in Point Reyes, and she’s been hauled out on Drakes Beach for a few days. She’s waiting to give birth. The seal mom’s choice to birth her pup on Drakes Beach this year might have been motivated partially by the treacherous conditions at another beach spot, the Point Reyes Headlands. Little does she know, climate change is the driving cause behind beaches becoming less hospitable for elephant seals.

A coho salmon valiantly pushes against the current of Olema Creek as winter settles in West Marin. She is lucky. At every stage in a salmon’s life cycle, they face perilous challenges and high mortality rates. This has always been true – predators have been around as long as the salmon have, after all – but conditions are growing increasingly challenging because of human disturbances, including manipulation of the environment and anthropogenic climate change.

Scientists have abundant data on bird population trends and on climate change impacts to habitats around the world. For birds that stay in one place year round, linking the two to study bird population responses to climate change is relatively straightforward. But migratory birds spend time in different places at different times. As a result, all of that existing data isn’t enough to tease apart how climate impacts birds at different stages of their annual journeys.

● Reconciling record rainfall in October with continued drought predictions for California
● Predictions for winter 2021, including La Niña
● How La Niña and El Niño cycles may start to shift with the changing climate

Join Science Communication Intern Jerimiah Oetting as he dives into how the Woodward Fire compares to its predecessor, what that recovery will look like in the coming months and years, and how certain vulnerable species might be impacted by wildfires in three new episodes of The Natural Laboratory podcast series.

This year’s fire season was historic in California. According to Cal Fire, over 4 million acres had burned as of mid-November. That's more than double the footprint that made 2018 the previous record holder. The Woodward fire in Point Reyes National Seashore, at 5,000 acres, was only a small component of that total. But it was driven by the same conditions that fuel the state’s largest fires: human-caused climate change and fire suppression.

Ocean acidification (OA) is a huge threat to marine life. But for now, it is harder to track remotely on a large scale. So this summer, seven West Coast national parks are teaming up with the 2021 NOAA West Coast Ocean Acidification Cruise. They’re collecting water samples in-person to check several OA indicators. Their data will help paint the most detailed picture yet of OA conditions up and down the coast, from parks’ rocky intertidal zones to dozens of miles offshore.