Climate change in California: scenarios and approaches for adaptation

Abstract

Even with aggressive global action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the climate will continue to change for decades due to previous emissions and the inertia in biogeophysical and social systems. Therefore, as a complement to mitigation actions, society must also focus on enhancing its capacity to adapt to the unavoidable impacts of climate change that we are already experiencing and will continue to experience over the next few decades. Resource managers, regional planners, and government agencies need to consider climate risks in their planning. We provide an overview of climate change scenarios for California and suggestions on the use of climate projections in state and regional planning efforts in the future.