Coastal San Diego has a wonderful climate because the huge ocean and breezes keep temperatures cooler and fairly constant.

PREDICTION: Long-term climate models predict that the brunt of temperature increase will affect the non-coastal inland southwest, resulting in some brutal heat waves in the arid southwest. As that scenario unfolds over the next thirty years, coastal California will be seen as an excellent climate alternative to other southwest areas for retirees and the wealthy, and that desirability will continue to drive up prices in the coastal and marine climate zones.

Super-Computer Climate Models
Climatologists (the scientists who study climate) have developed sophisticated computer models to make predictions about how different events will impact our short-term weather and long-term climate. Those models bear some grim news about the arid Southwest. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPGCC) for 2007 assembled multiple computer models, and the majority of them predict a much drier Southwest caused primarily by less precipitation in the region, and, secondarily, to increased evaporation. (See the Washington Post article Southwest May Get Even Hotter, Drier.) According to the Panel, this could result in dust-bowl droughts hitting the region with serious negative effects.

The figure above shows that computer models predict a 7 degree Fahrenheit average temperature increase for June/July/August (JJA) over the next 100 years. The heaviest hit part is in the non-coastal western United States. Source: http://www.ipcc.ch/graphics/gr-ar4-wg1.htm (Regional Climate Predictions).

What does this mean in practical terms for the Southwest US?
For people living in areas that are already arid (like Phoenix and Las Vegas), this could result in considerable hardship. Temperatures in these places are already hot enough to make life difficult during the summer. At 110 degrees, it is simply too hot to leave a child or a dog in a parked car, and your skin can sting as you climb into it. At these temperatures, the young and the elderly are most at risk, and some fatalities always occur. But as bad as it is at 110 degrees, we have seen heatwaves in recent times with temperatures exceeding 120 degrees. Cities have always seen increases in temperature due to the increased amount of concrete (the so-called "urban heat island effect"). Piling on even higher temperatures from global warming is likely to result in some broiling summer heatwaves in the future.

How does this affect the coast of California?
You may notice that the figure to the left that the IGPCC computer models do NOT predict much of a change for the strip of land adjacent to the Pacific Ocean. This is because the local land temperature is primarily determined by the Ocean and the cool breezes that come off of it. Once you move inland, the cool ocean has little effect, and the land heats up much faster. With the temperature rising, the areas that are already get a lot hotter, while the areas that are cooler are relatively unaffected.

For San Diego, the average HIGH temperature for the month of August is less UNDER 78 degrees. (See: http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/sgx/climate/san-san-month.htm). The average daily temperature in San Diego in August is only seventy-three degrees, but the average high gets to about 77.7 degrees. In the worst heat waves, temperatures in the coastal zone may get to 90 degrees or so. The net impact of rising temperatures will be a nominal one; though average temperature may go up a few degrees, that will mean that the mercury might go up to 95 degrees on the HOTTEST OF THE HOTTEST AUGUST DAYS in the coastal zone. As you can see, these are pretty blunted temperatures, and explains why many, if not most, homes in the coastal zone do not even have air conditioning. These low summer temperatures with beautiful blue skies are what people mean when they talk about a Mediterranean climate and why coastal Southern California's climate it is so valued. While numbers are objective, they do not begin to describe the wonderful quality of the air, sky, and temperature in the summer.

What factors will affect property values in the Southwest?
Though we believe that the Southwest is going to see some brutal heatwaves, we are not suggesting that heatwaves will sink property values. Places like Phoenix and Las Vegas have strong economies, and the strength of those economies will be the most important factor in how real estate performs over the next few decades. If Las Vegas can contine to grow its gaming industry, demand for homes will remain high. Meanwhile, Phoenix has a diverse, pro-business economy which has fueled fantastic growth. El Paso's proximity to Mexico has been a tremendous economic advantage. The fact that people may have to run their air conditioning during the summer in these places is not likely to cause a mass migration.

How will rising temperatures affect people's decisioning?
One does not have to be a super computing climatologist or a long-term scenario expert to visualize what the future holds. For Phoenix, Las Vegas, and other southwestern cities, rising temperatures mean an increasing number of summer heat waves exceeding 110 degrees and HIGHER. These brutally hot summers will prompt many to say to themselves, "I am tired of living through these summers. What are my alternatives nearby?" There are two options: 1) high-elevation temperature islands where temperatures are cooler due to elevation (e.g., Tucson); and 2) coastal California. If you think that this reasoning is oversimplified, we can tell you that we have seen a distinct uptick in the past few years of people moving from these locations saying exactly these things.

Do we have predictions about how this will play out in the decisioning process?
Anecdotally, it appears that this is primarily a phenomenon of the wealthy at this time. People with money say to themselves, "I have money and life is short; we should: a) move to the coast and enjoy ourselves; or b) buy a second home near the water so that we can escape the worst part of the summer. However, this thought process will move down-market to the less wealthy. In some cases, when the wealthy CEO of a business moves, the business itself will relocate. Wealthy retirees from the north who would have previously retired to Phoenix may decide that Orange County or San Diego County would be a better lifestyle. Finally, working people of average wealth who are experiencing excruciating summers will also seek alternatives. For them, the lack of wealth may make moving a bit more complicated; for example, it may mean moving into a smaller home or taking a job with less pay to move to the coast. But, our experience with middle-income home buyers shows time and time again that regular people with regular incomes will make sacrifices in order to move to coastal California.

What does this mean for coastal home values?
As the southwest gets hotter, people in San Diego are going to be less willing to sacrifice their climate to move somewhere else. Meanwhile, wealthy and/or ordinary people wanting to escape the heat will be willing to pay more to live in the coastal and marine zones. Local San Diego residents know that Escondido is not Encinitas, and La Mesa is not La Jolla, and this recognizes that distance to the water matters when it comes to home values. Though the affordability crisis is a real issue for San Diego, it is the same issue that exists in other areas like New York and San Francisco.

Many people have expressed to us over the years "If I had only known that such-and-such area was going to boom, I would have moved there and made a mint." There are no guarantees, and we certainly do not recommend a get-rich-quick, buy-and-flip approach to real estate. HOWEVER, we think that there are forces of nature in play with respect to rising temperatures, and those elemental forces will make coastal California property much more valuable relative to other areas that it is even today.

Other Reading
See our page San Diego County climate zones. /page.cfm?page=InfoMicroClimates The two zones that should be of most interest are the marine and coastal zones.
See our page on Fires. /page.cfm?page=InfoWildFires Global warming is causing the vegetation to dry out earlier, resulting inlarger and more frequest fires.
See the NOAA page about droughts in the United states. http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/drought/drght_history.html