Patrick Barnard
Patrick is the Research Director for the Climate Impacts and Coastal Processes Team, which includes overseeing the development and application of the Coastal Storm Modeling System (CoSMoS), coastal monitoring and process-based studies of beaches across California, and research investigating the link between climate variability and coastal hazards across the Pacific Ocean basin.
Dr. Patrick Barnard has been a coastal geologist with the USGS Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center in Santa Cruz since 2003, and is the Research Director of the Climate Impacts and Coastal Processes Team. His research focuses on storm- and climate-related changes to the beaches and estuaries bordering the Pacific Ocean. His research has been published in over 80 peer-reviewed scientific papers, including Nature, and presented over 100 times at scientific conferences and universities. He serves on numerous regional, national and international scientific review panels related to climate change and coastal hazards. He received a BA from Williams College, MS from University of South Florida, and PhD from UC Riverside.
Science and Products
PS-CoSMoS FAQs
Puget Sound - Coastal Storm Modeling System (PS-CoSMoS) frequently asked questions
Effects of Sea-Level Rise and Extreme Storms on California Coastal Habitats: Part 1
CoSMoS 1.0: Southern California
Beach topography and nearshore bathymetry of northern Monterey Bay, California
Near-surface wind fields for San Francisco Bay--historical and 21st-century projected time series
Nearshore waves in southern California: hindcast, and modeled historical and 21st-century projected time series
Wave projections for United States mainland coasts
Measuring and attributing sedimentary and geomorphic responses to modern climate change: Challenges and opportunities
Characterizing storm-induced coastal change hazards along the United States West Coast
Global and regional sea level rise scenarios for the United States
Digital Twin Earth - Coasts: Developing a fast and physics-informed surrogate model for coastal floods via neural operators
Changes in liquefaction severity in the San Francisco Bay Area with sea-level rise
Projecting climate dependent coastal flood risk with a hybrid statistical dynamical model
Drivers of extreme water levels in a large, urban, high-energy coastal estuary – A case study of the San Francisco Bay
Multiple climate change-driven tipping points for coastal systems
Twenty-first-century projections of shoreline change along inlet-interrupted coastlines
The application of ensemble wave forcing to quantify uncertainty of shoreline change predictions
Assessment of flood forecast products for a coupled tributary-Coastal model
The impacts of the 2015/2016 El Niño on California's sandy beaches
Non-USGS Publications**
**Disclaimer: The views expressed in Non-USGS publications are those of the author and do not represent the views of the USGS, Department of the Interior, or the U.S. Government.
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PS-CoSMoS FAQs
Puget Sound - Coastal Storm Modeling System (PS-CoSMoS) frequently asked questions
Effects of Sea-Level Rise and Extreme Storms on California Coastal Habitats: Part 1
In California, the near-shore area where the ocean meets the land is a highly productive yet sensitive region that supports a wealth of wildlife, including several native bird species. These saltmarshes, mudflats, and shallow bays are not only critical for wildlife, but they also provide economic and recreational benefits to local communities. Today, sea-level rise, more frequent and stronger storCoSMoS 1.0: Southern California
CoSMoS was initially developed and tested for the Southern California coast in collaboration with Deltares. CoSMoS has been used to assess coastal vulnerability within Southern California for the ARkStorm scenario, the January 2010 El Niño and Sea-Level Rise scenarios, and the January 2005 Newport Harbor Flood scenario. - Data
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Beach topography and nearshore bathymetry of northern Monterey Bay, California
This data release presents beach topography and nearshore bathymetry data from repeated surveys in northern Monterey Bay, California to document changes in shoreline position and coastal morphology as they relate to episodic (storms), seasonal, and interannual and longer (e.g. El Ni?o) processes. The ongoing monitoring program was initiated in October 2014 with semi-annual surveys performed in latNear-surface wind fields for San Francisco Bay--historical and 21st-century projected time series
To support Coastal Storm Modeling System (CoSMoS) in the San Francisco Bay (v2.1), time series of historical and 21st-century near-surface wind fields (eastward and northward wind arrays) were simulated throughout the Bay. While global climate models (GCMs) provide useful projections of near-surface wind vectors into the 21st century, resolution is not sufficient enough for use in regional wave mNearshore waves in southern California: hindcast, and modeled historical and 21st-century projected time series
As part of the Coastal Storm Modeling System (CoSMoS), time series of hindcast, historical, and 21st-century nearshore wave parameters (wave height, period, and direction) were simulated for the southern California coast from Point Conception to the Mexican border. The hindcast (1980-2010) time series represents reanalysis-forced offshore waves propagated to the nearshore, whereas the historical (Wave projections for United States mainland coasts
Coastal managers and ocean engineers rely heavily on projected average and extreme wave conditions for planning and design purposes, but when working on a local or regional scale, are faced with much uncertainty as changes in the global climate impart spatially-varying trends. Future storm conditions are likely to evolve in a fashion that is unlike past conditions and is ultimately dependent on th - Maps
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Measuring and attributing sedimentary and geomorphic responses to modern climate change: Challenges and opportunities
Today, climate change is affecting virtually all terrestrial and nearshore settings. This commentary discusses the challenges of measuring climate-driven physical landscape responses to modern global warming: short and incomplete data records, land use and seismicity masking climatic effects, biases in data availability and resolution, and signal attenuation in sedimentary systems. We identify oppAuthorsAmy E. East, Jonathan Warrick, Dongfeng Li, Joel B. Sankey, Margaret H. Redsteer, Ann E. Gibbs, Jeffrey A. Coe, Patrick L. BarnardCharacterizing storm-induced coastal change hazards along the United States West Coast
Traditional methods to assess the probability of storm-induced erosion and flooding from extreme water levels have limited use along the U.S. West Coast where swell dominates erosion and storm surge is limited. This effort presents methodology to assess the probability of erosion and flooding for the U.S. West Coast from extreme total water levels (TWLs), but the approach is applicable to coastalAuthorsJames B. Shope, Li H. Erikson, Patrick L. Barnard, Curt Storlazzi, Katherine A. Serafin, Kara S. Doran, Hilary F. Stockdon, Borja G. Reguero, Fernando J. Mendez, Sonia Castanedo, Alba Cid, Laura Cagigal, Peter RuggieroGlobal and regional sea level rise scenarios for the United States
This report and accompanying datasets from the U.S. Sea Level Rise and Coastal Flood Hazard Scenarios and Tools Interagency Task Force provide 1) sea level rise scenarios to 2150 by decade that include estimates of vertical land motion and 2) a set of extreme water level probabilities for various heights along the U.S. coastline. These data are available at 1-degree grids along the U.S. coastlineAuthorsWilliam Sweet, Ben Hamlington, Robert E. Kopp, Christopher Weaver, Patrick L. Barnard, David Bekaert, William Brooks, Michael Craghan, Gregory Dusek, Thomas Frederikse, Gregory Garner, Ayesha S. Genz, John P. Krasting, Eric Larour, Doug Marcy, John J. Marra, Jayantha Obeysekera, Mark Osler, Matthew Pendleton, Daniel Roman, Lauren Schmied, Will Veatch, Kathleen D. White, Casey ZuzakDigital Twin Earth - Coasts: Developing a fast and physics-informed surrogate model for coastal floods via neural operators
Developing fast and accurate surrogates for physics-based coastal and ocean mod- els is an urgent need due to the coastal flood risk under accelerating sea level rise, and the computational expense of deterministic numerical models. For this purpose, we develop the first digital twin of Earth coastlines with new physics-informed machine learning techniques extending the state-of-art Neural OperatoAuthorsP. Jiang, N. Meinert, H. Jordão, C. Weisser, S. Holgate, A. Lavin, B. Lutjens, D. Newman, H. Wainright, C. Walker, Patrick L. BarnardChanges in liquefaction severity in the San Francisco Bay Area with sea-level rise
This paper studies the impacts of sea-level rise on liquefaction triggering and severity around the San Francisco Bay Area, California, for the M 7.0 “HayWired” earthquake scenario along the Hayward fault. This work emerged from stakeholder engagement for the US Geological Survey releases of the HayWired earthquake scenario and the Coastal Storm Modeling System projects, in which local planners anAuthorsAlex R. R. Grant, Anne Wein, Kevin M. Befus, Juliette Finzi-Hart, Mike Frame, Rachel Volentine, Patrick L. Barnard, Keith L. KnudsenProjecting climate dependent coastal flood risk with a hybrid statistical dynamical model
Numerical models for tides, storm surge, and wave runup have demonstrated ability to accurately define spatially varying flood surfaces. However these models are typically too computationally expensive to dynamically simulate the full parameter space of future oceanographic, atmospheric, and hydrologic conditions that will constructively compound in the nearshore to cause both extreme event and nuAuthorsD. L. Anderson, P. Ruggiero, F. J. Mendez, Patrick L. Barnard, Li H. Erikson, Andrea C. O'Neill, M. Merrifield, A. Rueda, L. Cagigal, J. M. MarraDrivers of extreme water levels in a large, urban, high-energy coastal estuary – A case study of the San Francisco Bay
Reliable and long-term hindcast data of water levels are essential in quantifying return period and values of extreme water levels. In order to inform design decisions on a local flood control district level, process-based numerical modeling has proven an essential tool to provide the needed temporal and spatial coverage for different extreme value analysis methods. To determine the importance ofAuthorsCornelis M. Nederhoff, Rohin Saleh, Babak Tehranirad, Liv M. Herdman, Li H. Erikson, Patrick L. Barnard, Mick Van der WegenMultiple climate change-driven tipping points for coastal systems
As the climate evolves over the next century, the interaction of accelerating sea level rise (SLR) and storms, combined with confining development and infrastructure, will place greater stresses on physical, ecological, and human systems along the ocean-land margin. Many of these valued coastal systems could reach “tipping points,” at which hazard exposure substantially increases and threatens theAuthorsPatrick L. Barnard, Jenifer Dugan, Henry M. Page, Nathan J. Wood, Juliette A. Finzi Hart, Daniel Cayan, Li H. Erikson, David A. Hubbard, Monique Myers, John M. Melack, Samuel F. IacobellisTwenty-first-century projections of shoreline change along inlet-interrupted coastlines
Sandy coastlines adjacent to tidal inlets are highly dynamic and widespread landforms, where large changes are expected due to climatic and anthropogenic influences. To adequately assess these important changes, both oceanic (e.g., sea-level rise) and terrestrial (e.g., fluvial sediment supply) processes that govern the local sediment budget must be considered. Here, we present novel projections oAuthorsJanaka Bamunawala, Roshanka Ranasinghe, Ali Dastgheib, Robert .J. Nichols, A. Brad Murray, Patrick L. Barnard, T. A. J. G. Sirisena, Trang Minh Duong, Suzanne J. M. H. Hulscher, Ad van der SpekThe application of ensemble wave forcing to quantify uncertainty of shoreline change predictions
Reliable predictions and accompanying uncertainty estimates of coastal evolution on decadal to centennial time scales are increasingly sought. So far, most coastal change projections rely on a single, deterministic realization of the unknown future wave climate, often derived from a global climate model. Yet, deterministic projections do not account for the stochastic nature of future wave conditiAuthorsSean Vitousek, Laura Cagigal, Jennifer Montaño, Ana Rueda, Fernando Mendez, Giovanni Coco, Patrick L. BarnardAssessment of flood forecast products for a coupled tributary-Coastal model
Compound flooding, resulting from a combination of riverine and coastal processes, is a complex but important hazard to resolve along urbanized shorelines in the vicinity of river mouths. However, inland flooding models rarely consider oceanographic conditions, and vice versa for coastal flood models. Here, we describe the development of an operational, integrated coastal-watershed flooding modelAuthorsRobert Cifelli, Lynn E. Johnson, Jungho Kim, Tim Coleman, Greg Pratt, Liv M. Herdman, Rosanne C. Martyr-Koller, Juliette Finzi-Hart, Li H. Erikson, Patrick L. Barnard, Michael AndersonThe impacts of the 2015/2016 El Niño on California's sandy beaches
The El Niño Southern Oscillation is the most dominant mode of interannual climate variability in the Pacific. The 2015/2016 El Niño event was one of the strongest of the last 145 years, resulting in anomalously high wave energy across the U.S. West Coast, and record coastal erosion for many California beaches. To better manage coastal resources, it is critical to understand the impacts of both shoAuthorsSchuyler A Smith, Patrick L. BarnardNon-USGS Publications**
Barnard, P.L., Owen, L.A. and Finkel, R.C., 2004. Style and timing of glacial and paraglacial sedimentation in a monsoonal-influenced high Himalayan environment, the upper Bhagirathi Valley, Garhwal Himalaya. Sedimentary Geology, Volume 165, p. 199-221, doi:10.1016/j.sedgeo.2003.11.009Barnard, P.L., Owen, L.A., Sharma, M.C. and Finkel, R.C., 2004. Late Quaternary (Holocene) landscape evolution of a monsoon-influenced high Himalayan valley, Gori Ganga, Nanda Devi, NE Garhwal. Geomorphology, Volume 61 (1-2), p. 91-110, doi:10.1016/j.geomorph.2003.12.002Barnard, P.L., 2003. The Timing and Nature of Glaciofluvial Erosion and Resedimentation in the Himalaya: the Role of Glacial and Paraglacial Processes in the Evolution of High Mountain Landscapes. Published Ph.D. Thesis, University of California, Riverside, 295 pp.Davis, R.A., Jr. and Barnard, P.L., 2003. Morphodynamics of the barrier-inlet system, west-central Florida. Marine Geology, Volume 200 (1-4), p. 77-101, doi:10.1016/S0025-3227(03)00178-6Finkel, R.C., Owen, L.A., Barnard, P.L. and Caffee, M.W., 2003. Beryllium-10 dating of Mount Everest moraines indicates a strong monsoonal influence and glacial synchroneity throughout the Himalaya. Geology, Volume 31, p. 561-564, doi:10.1130/0091-7613(2003)031<0561:BDOMEM>2.0.CO;2Owen, L.A., Finkel, R.C., Ma, H., Spencer, J.Q., Derbyshire, E., Barnard, P.L. and Caffee, M.W., 2003. Timing and style of Late Quaternary glaciation in northeastern Tibet. Geological Society of America Bulletin, Volume 115 (11), p. 1356-1364, doi:10.1130/B25314.1Owen, L.A., Ma, H., Derbyshire, E., Spencer, J.Q., Barnard, P.L., Zeng, Y.N., Finkel, R.C. and Caffee, M.W., 2003. The timing and style of Late Quaternary glaciation in the La Ji Mountains, NE Tibet: evidence for restricted glaciation during the latter part of the Last Glacial. Zeitschrift für Geomorphologie, Supplemental Volume 130, p. 263-276, ISBN 978-3-443-21130-1Owen, L.A., Spencer, J.Q., Ma, H., Barnard, P.L., Derbyshire, E., Finkel, R.C., Caffee, M.W. and Zeng, Y.N., 2003. Timing of Late Quaternary glaciation along the southwestern slopes of the Qilian Shan, Tibet. Boreas, Volume 32, p. 281-291, doi:10.1111/j.1502-3885.2003.tb01083.xVan der Woerd, J., Owen, L.A., Tapponnier, P., Xiwei, X., Kervyn, F., Finkel, R.C. and Barnard, P.L., 2003. Giant, ~M8 earthquake-triggered ice avalanches in the eastern Kunlun Shan, Northern Tibet: characteristics, nature and dynamics. Geological Society of America Bulletin, Volume 116 (3), p. 394-406, doi:10.1130/B25317.1Barnard, P.L., Owen, L.A., Sharma, M.C. and Finkel, R.C., 2001. Natural and human-induced landsliding in the Garhwal Himalaya of Northern India. Geomorphology, Volume 40, p. 21-35, doi:10.1016/S0169-555X(01)00035-6Davis, R.A., Jr. and Barnard, P.L., 2000. How anthropogenic factors in the back-barrier influence tidal inlet stability: examples from the Gulf Coast of Florida, USA. In: Pye, K. and Allen, J.R.L. (Eds.), Coastal and Estuarine Environments: sedimentology, geomorphology and geoarchaeology. Geological Society, London, Special Publication Number 175, p. 293-303, doi:10.1144/GSL.SP.2000.175.01.21Barnard, P.L. and Owen, L.A., 2000. A selected bibliography for Late Quaternary glaciation in Tibet and Bordering Mountains. Quaternary International, Volume 65/66, p. 193-212Barnard, P.L. and Davis, R.A., Jr., 1999. Anthropogenic vs. natural influences on inlet evolution: west-central Florida. Coastal Sediments ’99 Conference Proceedings, Fire Island, New York, Volume 2, p. 1489-1504Barnard, P.L., 1998. Historical Morphodynamics of Inlet Channels: West-Central Florida. Master’s Thesis, University of South Florida, 179 pp.**Disclaimer: The views expressed in Non-USGS publications are those of the author and do not represent the views of the USGS, Department of the Interior, or the U.S. Government.
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