Climate & Sustainability
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Scientists looked at Antarctica from the air. What they saw has them worried
“It’s exactly what it sounds like,” says co-author Michael Polito, a professor of ocean sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz, in a statement. “We spied on penguins from space by using satellite images to figure what they eat all around Antarctica to help explain their diet and population response to recent climate change.”…
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Why a growing mass of warm water in the Pacific could be trouble for future weather
Pacifica is developing plans to deal with the rising water. But Gary Griggs, who specializes in coastal processes and hazards at UC Santa Cruz, doesn’t think there’s much the city can really do to stop the waves. “We can put in sandbags. We can bulldoze up sand berms. But we have really big waves and…
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The ocean’s hidden, deadly killer: Why thriving seas can suddenly die and turn into mass underwater graveyards
In June 2026, researchers at UC Santa Cruz confirmed that two young humpback whales found dead on the coastline had been affected by domoic acid: a neurotoxin that comes from harmful algal blooms. Additional coverage in the Santa Cruz Sentinel and Monterey County Herald.
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NASA satellite spots El Niño driving higher seas toward California
“For this winter in particular, there is a very reasonable likelihood that we’re going to see sea levels that are consistent with what we predict for the 2050s,” Michael Beck, the director of the Center for Coastal Climate Resilience at UC Santa Cruz, told SFGATE. “If you look at this somewhat positively, you could say that this…
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As Waves Pound Pacifica, Surfers Pitch a Reef to Defend the Shore
Pacifica still needs to study the reef’s scale, how much sand is needed and its environmental impacts, said Borja Gonzalez Reguero, a professor with the Coastal Science and Policy Program at UC Santa Cruz. “So far it’s a concept, but it could be a viable one,” Gonzalez Reguero said. He qualified that by saying the…
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The mystery eating Ocean Beach alive
One of Ocean Beach’s foremost sand sleuths is UC Santa Cruz researcher Patrick Barnard, who spent two decades analyzing San Francisco’s shoreline for the U.S. Geological Survey. Barnard said humans have been wrestling with the sand for nearly two centuries. He cites data from as far back as the Gold Rush, when excessive mining injected…
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Animals Facing Greatest Risk of Death From El Niño Marine Heat Waves
“It’s hard to predict which ecosystem components will be impacted. During the last major heatwave, impacts were felt across the entire food web including fisheries,” Heather Welch, an associate project scientist at the University of California Santa Cruz who researches climate variability and change in ocean ecosystems through the lens of marine predators and fisheries,…
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Flooding hits San Francisco’s Embarcadero as experts warn of more to come
Michael Beck, director of the Center for Coastal Climate Resilience at UC Santa Cruz, said conditions are expected to worsen and require long-term planning and investment. “It is going to get worse, and we need to start preparing for the fact that it is going to get worse. There are some places which we are…
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El Niño Is Here. Here’s What It Could Mean for the Bay Area This Winter
But because the Bay Area sits on the northernmost edge of the wet zone, intense rainfall is less guaranteed than in Southern California. Still, experts said human-caused climate change may be changing that equation. “What that means for California is it’s basically supercharged in the atmosphere,” said Patrick Barnard, research director for the UC Santa…
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Seymour Marine Discovery Center to open first new exhibit in 15 years
See More HQ is the center’s bilingual interactive “control room,” bringing real-time UC Santa Cruz coastal research to the public. Also in Lookout Santa Cruz.
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How Mangroves And Wetlands Can Help Protect Coastal Communities From Storms
Michael Beck, director of the Center for Coastal Climate Resilience, joined FOX Weather to explain how coastal communities can strengthen their defenses against storms through natural infrastructure. New visualization tools show how mangroves, wetlands and other coastal ecosystems can help reduce flooding and lessen the impacts of extreme weather.
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Yosemite National Park’s permissive new fishing policies spark controversy
Devon Pearse, an ecology professor at UC Santa Cruz and lead scientist at the California nonprofit Friends of the River who has previously studied Yosemite’s trout, told SFGATE that he’s skeptical the decision was based on science, and suspects instead it was likely politically motivated. In recent weeks, President Donald Trump signed an executive order…