As ocean levels rise, waves crash farther inland and the coast continues to crumble, Southern California is on track to lose 30 to 70% of its beaches over the next several decades. Almost half of all beach cliffs are likely to retreat by 30 to 80 feet by 2100. And a 1.6-foot increase in sea level rise by 2060 will leave low-lying coastal areas including the ports, Santa Monica, Venice and Redondo beaches particularly vulnerable to floods and storms, with one estimate predicting 15,000 people exposed in Los Angeles County.
Those are just some of the dire findings in California’s Fifth Climate Change Assessment, a state-commissioned report that comes out every several years and details how climate change is expected to affect everything from public health to animal habitat to central touchstones of the California way of life.
“There are things in there that are hard to digest, and hard to wrap our heads around,” said Abby Edwards, senior deputy director for the Governor’s Office of Land Use and Climate Innovation, which led the assessment. “I just hope that this can be a call to action to make sure we are still really doubling down on all of our climate mitigation goals.”
The report updates the picture for California’s hotter future with a projected 4 degrees Fahrenheit increase in average temperatures and 50% longer heat waves by the middle of the century. Even more warming is expected farther inland where temperatures are already highest.
In the Los Angeles region, which makes up 43% of the state’s population and comprises Los Angeles and Orange counties and parts of the Inland Empire and Ventura, inland areas are expected to see the hottest day of the year exceed 115 degrees by mid-century. San Bernardino, which already saw August temperatures peak at about 109 degrees this year, is expected to see 120 days a year above 95 degrees, compared with 81 days historically.
Climate change is not expected to change average precipitation overall, but it will become even more skewed and sporadic, so wet and dry years both will become more frequent in California, and droughts will last longer. The increased heat means the state will lose about 40% of its snowpack by mid-century, an important water source from the Sierra Nevada on which Southern California relies. The city of L.A., which brings in water from elsewhere for the vast majority of its supply, will be getting 7 to 13% less in imports by mid-century because its other sources, too, are drying up.
The total area that burns in fires each year will increase dramatically — 50% by mid-century — without changes in land management. The effect will be strongest in the mountains. Native chaparral, the shrubby natural landscapes of the foothills, are becoming stressed and being replaced by grasses and other fire-prone invasive plants. Changes in rain and snowfall could lead to more seasons like the ones before the 2025 Eaton and Palisades fires, during which unusually wet winters fueled lots of green plant growth that then became tinder dry over eight months without rain.
And just as the Eaton fire set low-income Black families further back than those with more resources to rebuild, many of the changes in the state’s climate will hit the most vulnerable hardest. A legacy of discriminatory housing policies means many low-income communities of color live in the hottest areas farther inland. One in five people in the Los Angeles region are currently unable to afford to adequately cool their homes, and the report notes this will probably get worse as extreme heat ramps up and puts more strain on the electric grid.
For years experts have laid out different pathways for how the world could seriously address climate change. The report authors also looked at how climate change could play out differently if the world burns more or fewer fossil fuels and puts in place stronger or weaker policies. For most of their projections, they focused on the scenario considered most likely without major interventions.
Edwards struck an optimistic note about the potential for a different outcome. “The future is not predetermined,” she said. “This is about projecting out into the future about what could happen, and I think it helps us be really clear-eyed about the decisions that we need to make.”
When it comes to adapting to climate change, she noted examples of things California is already doing, including “huge investments in the state in extreme heat, and thinking about how do we put shade over bus stops and green schoolyards.” Many communities along the coast have developed sea level rise plans that include building seawalls and planting trees and shrubs to stabilize the coast, she added. And there is work being done around how to better capture rain and stormwater to accommodate changing precipitation.
“I think there are a lot of actions that we can take right now to prepare us,” she said.
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