Researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz have received a five-year grant of $737,000 from the Heising-Simons Foundation. The funding will support Peter Weiss-Penzias and Eyal Rahav as they study the chemical and biological makeup of Pacific coastal fog water. Their work is part of a broader project involving several institutions that seeks to improve understanding and management of coastal resources in response to climate change.
The Pacific Coastal Fog Research project aims to answer common questions about fog’s future as global temperatures rise. “Understanding if and how fog will change as the climate warms is critical for societal planning for climate change,” said Weiss, who serves as a continuing lecturer and faculty researcher in the Science Division.
Weiss also highlighted other important aspects of their research: “Key questions such as what is in fog—including pollutants—and how much water fog provides to human systems like agriculture, are foundational to human health and resource management in the coastal environment.”
Weiss and Rahav plan to collect fog water samples from 15 locations along California’s coast, targeting areas with different airsheds and histories of air transport. They are focusing on patterns in concentrations of inorganic nutrients, biological molecules such as algal toxins, and chemical contaminants present in the fog.
Students at UC Santa Cruz’s Baskin School of Engineering will design and build an active fog collector using the Slugworks facility for use in this research. Additional details about the project are available through the Weiss-Penzias Lab at UC Santa Cruz.
Other universities participating in this research include San Francisco State University, California State University Monterey Bay, UC San Diego, and Indiana University.
The Heising-Simons Foundation collaborates with various partners to promote sustainable solutions related to climate change, clean energy, scientific research, education for young learners, and human rights.
