Save Our Shores is hosting a public lecture by Dr. Lisa Sloan on global climate change and its local implications.  The lecture will take place at the First Congregational Church at 900 High St. Santa Cruz from 6:30pm-8:30pm.

Sloan will be sharing graphic depictions of the local and statewide impacts of local climate change from a computer modeling system she has developed at UC Santa Cruz.  The changes the models describe will affect everything from the water supply to coastal fisheries to the demand for power during the summer. 

"Decisions have to be made about how to manage things like the water supply and the power grid, and these scenarios offer information about potential impacts on those systems," Sloan says. "If you had a choice between looking through a murky crystal ball and not looking at all, which would you choose?"

Sloan generates her climate scenarios using a sophisticated computer program derived from a weather forecasting model. The model incorporates a huge set of equations describing complex physical processes, such as solar radiation and how it changes during the year, the absorption and reflection of sunlight by land surfaces and clouds, heat transfer, air movements, evaporation of water, and the formation of rain and snow.

Sloan and other UCSC researchers plan to use the output from the regional climate model in a wide range of investigations, including: power management, water quality, marine ecosystems, endangered species, fire and water availability.