The newly formed Climate Adaptation Research Center (CARC), has been working behind the scenes developing a framework for supporting other UC Davis partner departments in developing new climate adaptation research and education. The Co-Directors, Dr. Michele Barbato, Dr. Eric Chu, Dr. Kathryn Conlon, Dr. Erwan Monier, Dr. Grey Monroe, joined UC Davis as a cohort aiming to build a world where community, industry, and government leaders have the knowledge and training they need to build a resilient, equitable, and thriving world in the face of climate change. 

The CARC at UC Davis will bring together faculty, research staff, and students conducting scientific, engineering, health, socioeconomic, and policy research on the actions across human and natural systems required to adequately respond to global climate change. The Center members support interdisciplinary collaborations between universities, governments, industry, and communities to scientifically assess exposures to climate-driven environmental and human-based hazards across multiple scales; detect and attribute risks to ecosystems, the built environment, and governance arrangements; understand the dimensions of socioeconomic, political, cultural, ecological, and infrastructural vulnerability that lead to the unequal distribution of adaptive capacity; and catalyze comprehensive climate adaptation action across local, state, national, and global levels through sustained research-policy partnerships and research-informed solutions.

Climate adaptation research and education at UC Davis spans the physical, natural, engineering, health, and social sciences, and involves multiple disciplines spanning, e.g., from civil engineering to atmospheric science, public health, environmental policy, community development, and urban and regional planning. The research informs, e.g., new technologies in modeling climate risks and impacts, methods for enhancing resilience of buildings and infrastructure, as well as innovative approaches to addressing socioeconomic and health inequities in the face of increasingly extreme weather, precipitation change, sea level rise, and other slow-or rapid-onset changes.

Many departments, laboratories, faculty, staff, and students at UC Davis collaborate through the CARC to support industry, state and federal governments, multilateral institutions, and nonprofit organizations in developing more innovative climate adaptation solutions. The CARC also educates the public and the broader academic community through conferences, outreach, and scholarly publications.