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Air quality can be affected by weather and thus is sensitive to a changing climate. Wildfire (influenced by weather), consecutive high temperature summer days, and other extreme events are projected to become more severe and frequent with climate change. These may create challenging conditions for managing air quality despite policy targets to reduce precursor and pollutant emissions. Although extreme events are becoming more intense and interest in climate adaptation is increasing among public health practitioners, little attention in scholarly literature and policy covers climate adaptation for air quality governance. Understanding the management and managers' perspectives at the local level provides insight about the needs for climate adaptation, including their adaptation status, perspectives, responsibilities, and roles. This study explores local manager perspectives and experiences of managing air quality within a changing climate as one puzzle piece to understand the gap in climate adaptation within the air quality sector. A broader goal is to contribute to the discussion of developing a multi-jurisdictional vision for reducing the impacts of air quality in a changing climate. In 2016 local air quality district managers in California were invited to participate in an online survey of 39 questions focused on extreme event impacts on air quality. The questionnaire focused on present air quality threats and extreme event challenges, adaptation status and strategies, adaptive capacities, perceived barriers to adaptation, and jurisdictional responsibilities and roles. Over 85 percent of the 35 local air districts in California participated in the survey, which represents 80 percent of the state's population. High awareness and knowledge of climate change among local managers indicates they are ready to adopt and take action on policies that would support climate adaptation, but barriers reported suggests they may need policies and adequate funding to take action and make necessary changes., Implications: Downscaled global climate models project an increasing severity and frequency of extreme events. In the southwestern United States, these include wildfire, heat events, and dry periods, among others, all of which can place an extra burden on air quality managers and emitters to achieve air quality standards even as they reduce emissions. Despite climate change presenting increasing challenges to meet air quality standards, in the southwestern United States, policy and action to mitigate these impacts have been surprisingly absent. California presents a valuable case study on the topic because of its historic leadership in air quality management for the United States and also because of its initiatives in combating climate change. Yet still we found that adaptation has not been incorporated into air quality management thus far, but local managers seem sufficiently knowledgeable and willing.

This article presents a systematic framework to identify barriers that may impede the process of adaptation to climate change. The framework targets the process of planned adaptation and focuses on potentially challenging but malleable barriers. Three key sets of components create the architecture for the framework. First, a staged depiction of an idealized, rational approach to adaptation decision-making makes up the process component. Second, a set of interconnected structural elements includes the actors, the larger context in which they function (e.g., governance), and the object on which they act (the system of concern that is exposed to climate change). At each of these stages, we ask (i) what could impede the adaptation process and (ii) how do the actors, context, and system of concern contribute to the barrier. To facilitate the identification of barriers, we provide a series of diagnostic questions. Third, the framework is completed by a simple matrix to help locate points of intervention to overcome a given barrier. It provides a systematic starting point for answering critical questions about how to support climate change adaptation at all levels of decision-making.

Key Takeaways: Greenhouse gas mitigation and adaptation to climate change vulnerabilities should be incorporated into existing utility business and project management processes. A comprehensive climate action plan can meet and exceed legal requirements, reduce risk, achieve business process efficiencies, apply best available science, and demonstrate social responsibility. Focused internal workgroups, expert consultation, inspired management, feedback loops, breadth of application, and quantitative detail are critical to success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Faced with increasing climate extremes and climate change impacts, local governments in California are eager to advance their adaptation measures and build local resilience. However, as previous studies and day-to-day interactions with local leaders make clear, identifying ways to resource adaptation is one of the most significant barriers to progress. This paper draws on selected findings from a study that aimed to better describe the nature of the adaptation finance challenges local governments face so as to find ways to overcome them. Building on initial findings from an online survey and nine stakeholder workshops to deepen the understanding of the nature of funding and financing challenges for local governments, we use a methodological innovation in archetype analysis, grounded theory, to develop a suite of 15 archetypal adaptation finance challenges, i.e., repeatedly found patterns of interrelated causal factors, traits, and outcomes ranging from establishing a matter of concern worthy of attention (and funding) to acquiring, using, and managing adaptation finance. These archetypes are found across different types and sizes of local governments facing different climate change threats. The resulting deeper understanding of local adaptation funding challenges represents an important contribution to the literature and opens up new avenues for intervention beyond the prevailing focus on creating new funding vehicles. We offer archetype-specific recommendations to overcome or reduce these critical finance challenges in local climate change adaptation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The persistent gap, termed the “adaptation deficit,” between the assumed ability of communities to adapt to climate change and the on-the-ground evidence of their progress to adapt is well-documented. To at least partially explain this adaptation deficit, a growing number of researchers have focused on the existence and nature of barriers to adaptation and about society’s ability to overcome them. This paper presents an empirical study that systematically identifies barriers to adaptation processes in the San Francisco Bay Area, California, USA. To do so, a theory-driven framework, previously developed by the authors, was used here to identify, organize, and diagnose barriers in four cities and one largely urbanized region. The study identified as the most frequent type of barrier encountered in these cases is related to institutional and governance issues, followed by the attitudes, values and motivations of the actors involved. Resource and funding constraints also matter, but scientific and technical issues are far less prominent than often presumed. The theoretical framework was found to usefully support the empirical identification and organization of barriers and to provide a “road map” for designing strategies to circumvent, remove, or lower the barriers and thus come closer to closing the adaptation deficit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Most climate change researchers in California want to increase their engagement with practitioners, and the more researchers focus on climate change, the more they want to engage practitioners. • The frequency of engagement with practitioners varies significantly across academic fields. • The most highly engaged disciplines are also the most peripheral disciplines in climate science. • Representing empirically the social structure of climate research, including its demographic and disciplinary composition, can inform future research on the "co-production" of climate information in contexts of public decision-making. Interactions between researchers and practitioners can lead to the increased use of climate science in decision-making. Past studies on these interactions have focused on the information needs of decision-makers, but less is known about why and how climate researchers choose to engage with decision-makers. Understanding the experiences, beliefs and constraints on both sides of the 'knowledge-action gap' is critical for implementing robust climate adaptation strategies. This study thus examines the perspectives and experiences of researchers regarding practitioner engagement, drawing from an original survey of California's climate research community (N = 991) and supplemental interviews. Given a history of support for climate research and climate change adaptation, analysis of the California case is useful as a means of characterizing the relationship between climate research and practitioner engagement. We find that most scientists want to engage more with practitioners but are constrained by several factors, including resource limitations and the challenge of building relationships. Additionally, we find that the level of interest and frequency of engagement with stakeholders varies significantly across academic disciplines. We demonstrate that building capacity within research organizations and integrating stakeholder engagement in funding criteria and professional development can help foster relationship-building between scientists and decision-makers. The analysis suggests that the social structure of climate research warrants further examination of the ways that climate researchers relate to practitioners at present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The disaster risk management framework is used to examine the effectiveness of management of extreme harmful algal blooms. • Actions taken in response to the 2015 HAB event differed among states and employment sectors. • Trusted relationships and coordination among agencies and with the fishing industry was associated with effective management. • Actions for increasing resilience to HAB events include building trust and improving coordination and consistency. The human dimensions of harmful algal blooms (HABs) are becoming increasingly apparent as they grow in frequency and magnitude in some regions of the world under changing ocean conditions. One such region is the U.S. West Coast, where HABs of toxigenic species of Pseudo-nitzschia have been found to coincide with or closely follow periods of warming. In 2015, the region experienced a massive HAB of Pseudo-nitzschia that was associated with the 2014-16 Northeast Pacific marine heatwave. The HAB event delayed the opening of the lucrative commercial Dungeness crab fishery for up to 5 months and closed the popular recreational razor clam fishery, resulting in fishery failures and disaster declarations and causing significant sociocultural and economic impacts to coastal communities. Here, management actions are examined that were taken by federal and state government agencies and responses of coastal residents to this extreme HAB event using a disaster risk management framework consisting of four phases: 1) prediction and early warning, 2) event response, 3) recovery and reconstruction, and 4) mitigation and prevention. Clear differences in management actions at the state level were evident in California, Oregon, and Washington during every phase, producing vastly different perceptions of management by coastal residents. A history of trusted relationships and coordination among agencies and with the fishing industry in Washington State was associated with more transparent and accepted management responses. The examination found that additional education, outreach, and trust-building exercises would provide benefits to communities affected by extreme HAB events. Our findings contribute to an understanding of climate change adaptation in coastal communities dependent on fishery resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]