Ambrose Bierce, author of satirical classic The Devil's Dictionary, once humorously described San Francisco as a mere “point upon a map" of its now widely known fog.

The often mercurial weather phenomenon, often affectionately dubbed "Karl" after an often acerbic, parody Twitter account, and undoubtedly a key feature of the city's mystique, now faces a murky future with global temperatures on the rise.

In a story published this weekend, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that scientists are currently unsure how climate change will affect the San Francisco's trademark mist, but that fog overall has seen sharp declines in other parts of the state.

Rachel Clemesha, an oceanographer who specializes in California's coastal clouds, told the Chronicle that the shroud of mystery surrounding fog's future prospects in San Francisco is fueled by a current inability to adequately model it.

“Clouds and fog are really hard to simulate in climate models. There’s so many scales at play, [from] the chemistry in the raindrop to circulation that’s on the global scale," she said.

Clemesha, who has been quoted in the New York Times as saying that she "[doesn't]  know enough" to express anything with confidence, is part of a growing and multidisciplinary cadre of scholars interested in San Francisco's signature gray blanket. These experts assert that a potential decline in fog could spell disaster for the local environment, as moisture brought by the fog is critical to the survival of everything from redwood trees to cultivated fruit, and even certain amphibians.

Dr. Todd Dawson, another fog expert with decades of experience studying ecology, told the Times in the same article that "less fog would be a game-changer for a lot of things." He found in a watershed 2010 study of observational data that fog has dropped by a third since the 1950s. In the past, he stated publicly that San Francisco has "basically lost three hours per day of fog" in recent years.

Additional studies analyzing Southern California's fog levels have reported similar findings, attributing the change to the urban "heat island effect" and a reduction in harmful air pollutants.

However, some researchers are skeptical, pointing out that Dawson's study only took data from two specific airports respectively located in Arcata and Monterey. They note that climate change might even increase fog levels by creating stronger winds, which would drive fog further inland and help atmospheric moisture to condense into fog.

Dawson, though, is unfazed by the dispute. He believes strongly that regardless of climate change's exact effects on fog, there's only one definitive path to maintaining San Francisco's signature gloom: stopping climate change, and soon, with the added caveat of it being a global issue not exclusive to just California.

"We have to curb global warming. Californians can’t do this by themselves," said Dawson in an interview with the Public Policy Institute of California, "Everything we do in California has to happen everywhere—this is a local problem with a global solution. We’re all interconnected."