7 hours ago
https://gizmodo.com/el-ninos-dreaded-kel...2000818879
INTRO: Southern California communities such as Malibu, Long Beach, and San Clemente are watching their beaches disappear. In recent years, rising sea levels have swallowed huge chunks of the coastline, threatening waterfront homes. Now, an El Niño-driven phenomenon is expected to make this situation even worse.
During El Niño, winds that normally blow east to west along the equator weaken and periodically reverse, creating westerly wind bursts that set off oceanic Kelvin waves. These massive, slow-moving pulses of warm water travel from the western Pacific Ocean east across the equator until they reach Central and South America, at which point they travel north as “coastal trapped waves” along North America’s Pacific coast.
That’s exactly what’s happening now. Meteorologists warn that the approaching warm water could reach southern California by early October and raise sea levels by up to a foot (30 centimeters).
“Tides are already running a foot or more above average thanks to the extreme marine heatwave, and additional sea level elevation may begin soon as the largest coastally trapped Kelvin wave of the El Niño-generated sequence thus far arrives in October,” Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources, wrote in a blog post on Sunday... (MORE - details)
INTRO: Southern California communities such as Malibu, Long Beach, and San Clemente are watching their beaches disappear. In recent years, rising sea levels have swallowed huge chunks of the coastline, threatening waterfront homes. Now, an El Niño-driven phenomenon is expected to make this situation even worse.
During El Niño, winds that normally blow east to west along the equator weaken and periodically reverse, creating westerly wind bursts that set off oceanic Kelvin waves. These massive, slow-moving pulses of warm water travel from the western Pacific Ocean east across the equator until they reach Central and South America, at which point they travel north as “coastal trapped waves” along North America’s Pacific coast.
That’s exactly what’s happening now. Meteorologists warn that the approaching warm water could reach southern California by early October and raise sea levels by up to a foot (30 centimeters).
“Tides are already running a foot or more above average thanks to the extreme marine heatwave, and additional sea level elevation may begin soon as the largest coastally trapped Kelvin wave of the El Niño-generated sequence thus far arrives in October,” Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources, wrote in a blog post on Sunday... (MORE - details)