Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
valley, and then it was invaded by the sea in an earlier warm period and
became the bay we know and love. Now the sea is coming in again. Change
is a constant in nature, so the bay is going to adapt—it's just a question of
how. This isn't to say we can all just go and drive our Hummers; it's to say
there's no reason to go into denial and give up.”
Scientists have little doubt that sea level rise is coming to the Bay Area,
and it's coming soon. “The state of the science today is that sea level will
rise by between half a meter and a meter and a half [16-55 inches] by
2100,” says Noah Knowles, a hydrologist. Knowles works with a team of
USGS scientists that has married global climate change projections with
local data on temperature, wind, tides, flows, and other hydrodynamics.
Together, they are producing some of the first detailed forecasts of impacts
on San Francisco Bay and its watershed. Their work reveals that climate
change is not just something that will affect polar bears in Alaska. In the
bay region, there will be flooding in low-lying shoreline areas. In the wa-
tershed, there'll be less snow in the Sierra, and it will melt sooner and run
off earlier than it has in recent centuries, producing water shortages. Di-
minishing and fast-melting snowpacks were already being documented in
the Sierra as early as 1991.
Windmills in the Montezuma hills of the North Bay, generating electricity without
emitting greenhouse gases. (Francis Parchaso)
