A Review of the Report
Global Climate Change and California: Potential Implications for Ecosystems, Health, and the Economy

Publication Number: 500-03-099C
Publication Date: November 2003

The executive summary, abstract and table of contents for this report are available below. This publication is available as an Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format Files. In order to download, read and print PDF files, you will need a copy of the free Acrobat Reader software installed in and configured for your computer. The software can be downloaded from Adobe Systems Incorporated's website.

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Executive Summary

Under contract to the PIER Environmental Area (PIER-EA), the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) managed a multi-year study that examined the potential effects of global climate change on California and prepared a report entitled Global Climate Change and California: Potential Implications for Ecosystems, Health, and the Economy (Energy Commission publication # 500-03-058CF). In view of the broad scope of this study and its importance for environmental policy in California, PIER-EA decided to solicit an expert review of the report to identify its strengths, limitations and implications for future research.

Objectives

The reviewers examined each of the component analyses of the study, evaluating methods, data issues, conclusions, significance, and implications for future work on climate change impacts in California.

Outcomes

This research identified the strengths and limitations of the various efforts detailed in the EPRI report. The conclusions, recommendations, and benefits to California are discussed below.

Conclusions, Recommendations, and Benefits to California

The reviewers concluded that the study constitutes a significant step forward in the analysis of regional climate change impacts in the United States. At the same time, in recognition of the nascent state of climate impact science, they suggest that the study’s findings be viewed not as specific predictions, but as a sensitivity analysis that considers a range of potential outcomes. In keeping with this view, they suggest that a high priority for future research should be the expanded and explicit consideration of uncertainty in both regional climate scenarios and specific categories of climate change impacts.

Following is a summary of other key recommendations:

• Create a set of official California climate projections incorporating regional specificity, stochastic information (such as temperature and precipitation variability), and additional relevant variables.

• Develop an integration and synthesis framework for analyzing impact interactions among sectors and for formulating coordinated, adaptive policy responses.

• Support or, as appropriate, exploit developments in dynamic vegetation modeling to reduce uncertainties regarding transient responses (among other factors), and to improve the representations of a range of bio-physical and relevant climatic effects.

• Include sub-regional specific detail and climatic variability effects in the analysis of coastal impacts.

• Extend public health impact analysis by incorporating more general and flexible representations of variance in incidence modeling and by including a broader range of potential impacts drivers.

• Explicitly incorporate uncertainty into urban growth projections.

• For the modeling of climate change impacts on energy demand:

The implementation of these recommendations would produce improved California-focused climate change research and would benefit California through more accurate climate change information that the State’s decision makers can use to design and implement informed policies.

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Abstract

Climate change has the potential to affect many aspects of California—the survival of its unique ecosystems, its ability to produce electricity, the natural resources that support its economy, its supply of water and agricultural products, and the health of its citizens.   This effort evaluated the PIER-funded studies that examined the potential impacts from climate change on these sectors, to create a knowledge base for research on climate change impacts in California and to identify paths and priorities for future research.

The researchers found that those studies provided an invaluable benchmark for future research on regional climate change impacts, both in California and elsewhere.   Simultaneously, they emphasize that the studies’ findings be viewed not as specific predictions of future climate and impacts, but as a sensitivity analysis that considers a range of potential outcomes.   The reviewers provide a series of recommendations for future studies on climate change impacts in California, involving extensions and improvements in data, methods, and modeling techniques.

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Table of Contents

Preface..

Executive Summary

Abstract

1.0 Introduction

2.0 Project Approach

3.0 Project Outcomes

4.0 Conclusions and Recommendations

5.0 References

List of Tables

Table 1. The Effect Of Climate Change On Ecosystem Carbon Stocks With And Without Elevated CO₂ Levels.