Climate Change: Challenges to California’s Agriculture and Natural Resources

Forum Videos Are Available at bit.ly/1ugX8yk California’s ongoing drought is extraordinary and one of the worst in state history. Recently, Stanford University scientists reported that the drought may be linked to global climate change. This special issue of ARE Update summarizes a one-day Forum on climate change and associated challenges facing California’s agriculture and natu­ ral resources, held in Sacramento in May 2014. California’s Governor Jerry Brown addressed the Forum and he stressed the importance of both reducing carbon emissions, and at the same time devis­ ing ways to adapt to climate change. The United Nations Intergovernmen­ tal Panel (IPCC) 5th assessment of the published literature on climate change concluded that some of the worst impacts of climate change will be in agriculture and these impacts are likely more seri­ ous than what was believed earlier. We all live downstream from agriculture and agriculture is truly the “canary in the coal mine” when it comes to climate change. In this issue, one of the leading climate scientists in the nation, Benja­ min Santer from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, distills the sci­ entific evidence into layperson’s terms and describes the most likely impacts of climate change on California. Maximilian Auffhammer notes that climate change is a “slow-moving process” that offers the agricultural industry a window of opportunity in dealing with climatic uncertain­ ties. Professor Auffhammer points out there are few studies that have Governor Edmund G. Brown, Jr. addressed the Giannini Foundation Climate Change Forum on May 19, 2014.