Silvestrum, in collaboration with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), is evaluating how future extreme storms may change in the San Francisco Bay Area under future climate conditions. Understanding how extreme events may change has remained a critical data gap for climate adaptation planning in the Bay Area. In this study, the Silvestrum/LBNL team will model four historic storm events that resulted in storm-related damage and disruption for the SFPUC, SFO, and/or the Port. The storms will be modeled on LBNL’s super computer system – one of the larger super computers in the world. After the storms have been suitably calibrated to match existing conditions, the storms will be modeled under future climate conditions to assess how the storms may change under a warming climate.

The National Climate Assessment is a Congressionally-mandated report that is updated every four years to assess and inform the Nation about the impacts of climate variability and climate change on the U.S., as well as presenting what is being done, and what can be done, to minimize impacts and risks. Dr. Kris May served as a Regional Chapter Lead and Lead Author. She leads a team of 12 Federal and academic scientists focusing on current climate variability and future climate risks, impacts on jobs and communities, the natural and built environments, and frontline communities – the communities anticipated to feel the impacts of a changing climate first and the worst.

Silvestrum and UC Berkeley collaborated on the development of a regional shallow groundwater layer for the San Francisco Bay Area using groundwater monitoring well data collected for the Regional Water Quality Control Board (Plane et al, 2019). The regional dataset highlights areas around the Bay where the existing groundwater surface is within 2 meters of the ground surface. As sea levels rise, the groundwater surface will also rise, and these areas are at the greatest risk of flooding due to emergent groundwater. The City of Alameda is one of these at-risk areas. However, due to sparse well data within the city limits, and a strong tidal and precipitation influence within the Alameda soils, improvements to the data set are required to better inform climate adaptation efforts. Silvestrum is currently developing 3 data sets for the City of Alameda: an estimate of the wet-season groundwater surface (i.e., the highest groundwater surface observed during very wet winters); an estimate of the dry-season groundwater surface (i.e., the lowest groundwater surface observed during dry summers and period of drought); and contaminant mapping of water quality constituents with concentrations above human-health benchmarks. Area with sparse data will be supplemented with geotechnical soil boring data collected throughout the City and the Oakland International Airport.

Dr. Steve Crooks was a lead author of the IPCC 2013 Wetland Supplement, and he currently leads the U.S. interagency/science community Coastal Wetland Carbon Working Group tasked with incorporating coastal wetlands within the U.S. Inventory of GHG emissions and sinks. He also co-chairs the Carbon Advisory Panel for the Global Environmental Facility Blue Forest Project and is the co-founder of International Blue Carbon Initiative. His work quantifying the carbon budgets of coastal wetlands forms the basis of several recent reports, as well as serving as the basis for numerous panel events at the UNFCCC COPs 16 - 24.