Our Mission
Our mission is to make data portraying climate change in California more accessible and actionable for a broad audience, with an emphasis on energy sector stakeholders and local governments. We do this by:
- Building tools for exploring and downloading high-quality, peer-reviewed climate data from California’s scientific and research community. Cal-Adapt presents research developed under California’s climate change assessments, with Cal-Adapt 2.0 focusing on California’s Fourth Climate Change Assessment, including datasets portraying sea level rise, wildfires, droughts, storms, and extreme heat events.
- Designing tools and content to help users better understand climate data (via tooltips, Glossary and Cal-Adapt Blog) and learn best practices for working with climate projections (see our Get Started guide). We make it easy to share charts and tables of climate data with stakeholders and provide options for customizing data visualizations to meet sector specific requirements in some of our more technical tools.
- Building a public Cal-Adapt API to empower researchers and developers to integrate climate data on Cal-Adapt into existing workflows and develop domain specific applications.
- Engaging with and learning from our users through workshops, webinars and stakeholder outreach.
Our Audience

Cal-Adapt offers free public access to peer-reviewed data that support exploration of California’s climate change impacts on state infrastructure, communities, and natural resources. Our users include energy sector stakeholders, infrastructure managers, municipal planners, community-based organizations, state agencies, scientists and climate experts, educators, and interested participants from the general public.
Our Partners
Funding and Oversight
Site Development
Science Advisor
Data Contributors





Background
The California Energy Commission (CEC) and UC Berkeley’s Geospatial Innovation Facility (GIF) initially released Cal-Adapt to the public in 2011 as a web-based resource to showcase the innovative climate change research being produced by the scientific community in California, as recommended in the 2009 California Climate Adaptation Strategy.
The GIF, with funding support from the CEC, developed and launched the current iteration of Cal-Adapt (version 2.0) as part of California’s Fourth Climate Change Assessment. This version includes updates and enhancements that increase its ease of use, information value, interactive visualizations, and data accessibility. Cal-Adapt's design and functionality have been developed in collaboration with a variety of beta testers and advisory committee members who provided valuable feedback throughout several iterations of updates.
Cal-Adapt has been recognized by California’s legislature as a key resource to support local hazard mitigation efforts and has helped California move forward on climate policy by providing easy access and exploration of high-resolution, regionally downscaled climate projections that are sanctioned by the state to be used in climate adaptation resiliency and planning. The website continues to evolve to present the latest scientific data and to further support stakeholders in understanding climate-related impacts relevant to local decision making.
Our Team
The Geospatial Innovation Facility at UC Berkeley's College of Natural Resources provides leadership and training across a broad array of integrated mapping technologies. Our goal is to help people better understand the changing world through the analysis and visualization of spatial data.
Nancy Thomas
Executive Director (Project Lead)
Maggi Kelly
Faculty Director (Advisory Oversight)
Brian Galey
Senior Web Application Developer
Eric Lehmer
Web Application Developer
Chris Henrick
Web Application Developer
Previous contributors:
- Shruti Mukhtyar,
- Lucy Andrews,
- Kevin Koy,
- Falk Schuetzenmeister,
- Sarah Van Vart,
- Ankita Goyal,
- Mark O'Connor.
Martine Schmidt-Poolman
California Energy Commission
Leah Fisher
Strategic Growth Council
Susan Wilhelm
California Energy Commission
Guido Franco
California Energy Commission
Our Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) is composed of experts from state and local government, utilities, consulting firms and academia. We thank the following people for serving on our TACs. If you are interested in serving on our TAC in the future, please email nethomas@berkeley.edu.
David Altaire
State Water Board
Jamie Anderson
DWR
Steve Baule
LADWP
Nathan Bengtsson
PG&E
Gurdeep Bhattal
Cal Trans
Brian D'Agostino
Sempra Energy, SDG&E
Erik DeKok
Ascent Environmental
Owen Doherty
Eagle Rock Analytics
Nuin-Tara Key
OPR
Karen Gaffney
NCRP
Tom Gates
CEC
Ted Grantham
UCANR
Natalie Hernandez
Climate Resolve
Hiro Kuchida
SoCalEdison
Shelby MacNab
City of Fresno
Sona Mohnot
Greenlining Institute
Amber Motley
CAISO
Jenn Phillips
OPR
Kristin Ralff-Douglas
CPUC
Kif Scheuer
LGC
Jasneet Sharma
San Mateo County
Benjamin Sleeter
USGS
Alex Tardy
NOAA
Jason Vargo
CADPH
Megan Walton
CalOES
Sasha Wisotsky
CAHCD
Previous contributors:
- Andrew Schwarz,
- Chris Benjamin,
- Adam Smith,
- Kerry Timmer,
- Kathleen Ave,
- Jim Blatchford,
- Michael McCormick,
- Aaron Cuthbertson,
- JR DeLaRosa,
- Lesley Ewing,
- Neil Maizlish,
- Andrew Gunther,
- Jonathan Parfrey,
- Bruce Riordan,
- LaNae Van Valen,
- Carol Greenwood,
- Sarah Pittiglio,
- Kurt Malchow,
- Amy Luers.
Disclaimer: This website was prepared as a result of work sponsored by the California Energy Commission (CEC) and the California Strategic Growth Council (SGC). It does not necessarily represent the views of the CEC, SGC, the agencies' employees or the State of California. The CEC, SGC, the State of California, its employees, contractors and subcontractors make no warranty, express or implied, and assume no legal liability for the information on this website or made available via the website; nor does any party represent that the use of this information will not infringe upon privately owned rights. The website has not been approved or disapproved by the CEC or SGC, nor has the CEC or SGC passed upon the accuracy or adequacy of the information on the website.