Groundbreaking Research Collaboration Will Reveal Science of Fog Dynamics and Interactions

The Heising-Simons Foundation’s Science program has awarded approximately $3.7 million over five years to support a multi-university research project that will uncover crucial insights into fog dynamics, water resources, and impacts resulting from future changes to fog composition in the Pacific Coast.

One of the Science program’s core areas of funding is dedicated to supporting research that helps us better understand complicated climate processes, the future implications for our environment, and how to best address them.

The Pacific Coastal Fog Research (PCFR) project is a first-of-its-kind interdisciplinary collaboration that brings together recognized experts in fog modeling, remote sensing, analytic chemistry physical characterization and collection and ecosystem impacts and interactions. PCFR will empower coastal California communities to build climate resilience by delivering improved coastal fog forecasts, projections of future change, as well as quantifying localized ecological impacts.

“Historically, fog research has been hard to fund because it is often construed as highly regionally or globally unimportant,” Science Program Officer J.P. O’Brien said. “However, nothing could be further from the truth. Fog impacts and shapes both urban and ecologically and agriculturally critical regions all over the world.”

Indeed, there are many other regions in the world where fog shapes daily life, and yet its dynamics are understudied. In order to address this gap, the researchers behind the PCFR project are planning to create a self-sustaining Virtual Fog Institute to bring together domestic and international fog researchers and catalyze further research and collaborations.

The five grants awarded to PCFR are:

Travis O’Brien, University of Indiana, Bloomington

• Amount: $725K 
• Purpose: For research on fog predictability, fog water availability, and the future of fog and low cloud cover along the U.S. West Coast.

Rachel Clemesha, University of California, San Diego, Scripps Institution of Oceanography

• Amount: $729K
• Purpose: For investigation of historical and future patterns of coastal fog frequency, variability, and connections to regional and global climate trends.

Sara Baguskas, San Francisco State University

• Amount: $729K 
• Purpose: For research to understand the impacts of fog and low cloud cover on California’s coastal ecosystems and water dynamics, and how these might shift with climate change.

Daniel Fernandez, California State University, Monterey Bay

• Amount: $732K
• Purpose: For investigation into the physical characteristics of fog, namely droplet size distribution and how that distribution may change with latitude and elevation.

Peter Weiss, University of California, Santa Cruz

• Amount: $737K
• Purpose: For research to characterize the physical, chemical, and biological constituents of coastal fog in California, and how those may impact both ecological and human health.