Climate adaptation

The findings of recent study, published in Nature Cities, show that a multi-faceted strategy to address extreme urban heat can cool Saudi Arabia’s capital city, Riyadh, by up to 8.1°F. These strategies include a combination of highly reflective ‘super cool’ building materials, irrigated greenery, and energy retrofitting measures. Extreme urban heat affects more than 450 cities worldwide, increasing energy consumption needs and adversely impacting health, including heat-related illness and death.

The findings of recent study, published in Nature Cities, show that a multi-faceted strategy to address extreme urban heat can cool Saudi Arabia’s capital city, Riyadh, by up to 8.1°F. These strategies include a combination of highly reflective ‘super cool’ building materials, irrigated greenery, and energy retrofitting measures. Extreme urban heat affects more than 450 cities worldwide, increasing energy consumption needs and adversely impacting health, including heat-related illness and death.

Peter Gleick, hydroclimatologist, author, and senior fellow at the Pacific Institute in Oakland, opines that recent mega-storms show the immediate need to dramatically scale-up efforts to prepare California for both flooding and drought. We must adapt California’s water infrastructure to a current and projected climate regime rather than the hydrology of its past.

Cities around the world such as Medelin (Columbia), Singapore, and Dusseldorf (Germany) are integrating nature into their infrastructure and built environments to reduce urban heat island effects, increase biodiversity, and improve air quality. In a time of global warming, these nature-based retrofits to impervious roadways and rooftops with trees, shrubs, and other plantings are effectively lowering temperatures by promoting shade, evapotranspiration, and reduced black top asphalt.

BARC is proud to release our Regional System Assessment for Adapting to Climate Change report. This work captures how our regional agencies are responding to a wide array of climate hazards including sea level rise, inland flooding, water quality, drought, extreme heat, and wildfire and air quality.

Extreme heat has been a concern in Southern California for decades as temperatures continue to rise. In the City of Los Angeles, an effort to provide bus stop shade for public transit riders--who tend to be people of color—demonstrates a long-standing challenge in all levels of government: inability to work across departments.

What will it cost to protect the Bay Area from sea level rise? Try $110 billion, says state agency. The Metropolitan Transportation Commission and the Bay Conservation and Development Commission have collaborated to develop a cost estimate for adapting to rising sea level in the SF Bay Region. It will not be inexpensive, but the cost of doing nothing is much more. (John King, SF Chronicle)

The Metropolitan Transportation Commission and the Bay Conservation and Development Commission have collaborated to develop a cost estimate for adapting to rising sea level in the SF Bay Region. It will not be inexpensive, but the cost of doing nothing is much more. (John King, SF Chronicle)

Juan Moreno Haines writes from inside San Quentin Prison on the impacts of climate change on the incarcerated; an extremely vulnerable population that often goes unrecognized.

On May 20th, 2022 the BARC Governing Board approved the BARC Shared Work Plan.

After a 5 month- process, including numerous working group meetings and a two-month-long public comment period, BARC has synthesized 3 initiatives to strategically align agency planning and regulatory initiatives to advance shared climate mitigation and adaptation goals.