Climate Change and Sea Level Rise Scenarios for California Vulnerability and Adaptation Assessment

This white paper provides an evaluation of physical elements of climate change and sea level rise that are contained in the California Climate Change Vulnerability and Adaptation Assessment. The analyses use six global climate models, each run under the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Special Report on Emissions Scenarios B1 and A2 scenarios. From the global climate models and associated downscaled output, these scenarios contain a range of warming, continued interannual and decadal variation of precipitation with incremental changes by the middle and end of twenty‐first century, substantial loss of mountain snow pack, and a range of sea level rise along the California coast.