Sold out Exploratorium summit dealing with El Niño

Well, tomorrow, climate experts, scientists and community leaders will gather in San Francisco for a summit to talk about El Nino sea level rise and what it means for the Bay Area and beyond. The World Meteorological Organization is forecasting an El Nino season starting next month that could break records when it comes to rainfall and severe weather. Joining us to discuss this meeting happening tomorrow is Jessica Fein. She's the director of planning for San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission. Good morning and welcome, Jessica. Thank you. Good morning, Allie. Tell us about the goal behind this summit. It's the third year you all have been doing this. What do you hope to accomplish when it's done? Thanks, Allie. So the Rising Together Summit is a sold-out regional gathering focused on sea level rise adaptation, and it's hosted by my agency, the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission, a mouthful, also called BCDC, in partnership with the Greenbelt Alliance, and it's held at the Exploratorium, our iconic science museum located right on San Francisco Bay in San Francisco. And the summit is all about bringing together all sorts of different people who think about and work on sea level rise. Scientists, climate practitioners, advocates, elected officials, to turn the challenge of sea level rise into action. We have in the Bay Area just incredible leaders and innovative projects happening throughout the Bay Area and the summit is really an opportunity to celebrate that progress and also build momentum because there's a whole lot more to do. Well, the timing of this comes another weekend when there's coastal flood advisories in Northern California, the latest of several and king tides expected around Thanksgiving. How is this issue of sea level rise going to affect the Bay Area, not just now, but 10, 20, 30 years from now? That's exactly right. So El Niño is a natural climate pattern that happens every two to seven years. And this winter we're expecting to see a foot or so, a foot and a half of temporarily rising sea levels. But this is really a glimpse of what our future will look like as sea levels rise and continue to rise. Into what won't be a temporary one time event, but will really be the new normal in the future. And so what we're experiencing at high tide today is going to be permanently inundated in the future. And this is because of how our bay and our shoreline has been developed. A lot of those low-lying areas actually used to be part of the bay, and they were filled in for landfills, for housing, for transportation. And unfortunately, a lot of those areas are the places that are going to be experiencing flooding first. So we have a lot to do to make sure that we're ready in the future to prepare for higher sea levels. This is the third year of the summit. What are some solutions that have come from it from previous years that we can apply now? We have all sorts of different types of things we can do to address sea level rise from restoring our wetlands. And there's great progress going in terms of not just making sure that those wetlands come back. but also that they're ready and have the sediment that's needed to adapt to more water so they don't flood. There's all sorts of innovative hybrid solutions where you can think about flood protection and nature at the same time through things like horizontal levees and there was just a ribbon cutting a couple weeks ago in Palo Alto for for one of the first projects in the Bay Area area that's taking on that technique. So it's sold out, but are there some activities or talks that people can still go to? Or what should people do if they want to find out more about the summit and what comes from it? Yeah, unfortunately, the summit itself is sold out. So, um... So that's that, but we do encourage folks to learn more about what's going on in the region in terms of sea level rise adaptation by visiting our website, which is www.bayadapt.org, and there's actually going to be a really great event hosted next Saturday. It's a community event. In San Francisco at the Ferry Building Plaza and it's all about El Nino and sea level rise. It's free and it's family friendly. The Exploratorium and the Port of San Francisco and the city will be there and there'll be a lot to do if people want to join for that really great event. So that's next Saturday, November 14th from 1 to 4 at the Ferry Building Plaza. All right, yeah, just to let the public and let people know what you all are working on, what the concerns are. And what we should do about it long-term. Jessica Fain, Director of Planning at the San Francisco Bay Area Conservation and Development Commission. Good luck with the summit over the next couple of days. We'd love to have you back in the future to talk about what came from it and what we can look forward to in the weeks and months ahead. Thanks, Jessica. Thank you.