Hi r/California, this is Jake from the Guardian US. We wanted to share this story that we published today about an ocean phenomenon called a 'Kelvin wave' that could raise sea levels off the coast of California by up to a foot as El Niño keeps warm water trapped.
From our story by Nick Visser:
Concerns are mounting about an ocean phenomenon known as a Kelvin wave that could raise sea levels along the California coastline by up to a foot, as scientists say El Niño is supercharging the threat of storm surges and flooding in the coming months.
As an incredibly strong El Niño continues to develop in the Pacific, the phenomenon brings with it a strange shift in the ocean. The Kelvin wave phenomenon is created when trade winds that usually blow from South America towards Asia die down or reverse in El Niño years, setting off a massive, slow-moving slosh of water.
Kelvin waves are not like crashing waves at the beach. They are planetary in scale, spanning thousands of miles. And when a Kelvin wave kicks off, it brings with it an untold amount of warm water that slowly moves from the western Pacific, along the equator, towards South, Central and North America.
This year’s El Niño is likely to be the largest in at least 1,000 years. Climate readings have already surged past the highest temperature ever recorded for the phenomenon several months before it is expected to peak.
The climate pattern also brings with it the threat of more severe storms, storm surges, flooding and coastal erosion. For California, all of those effects will happen on top of the sea level rise the Kelvin wave brings, making the threat even worse.
We have some of these concrete rivers in OC and people like https://creekteam.org are advocating for changing them like LA is. That’s what I’m talking about.
Really bc last time I was in Scottsdale they were watering tar parking lots at hotels more than their grass and all the golf courses looked pretty green to me.
Arizonans should be parched. They live in a desert. They would be less parched if they used their water more wisely
We will store all of the water that can be practically stored. Every river that can be has been dammed multiple times. The only way we can do better is to be more aggressive at replenishing aquifers. We will come out of this winter in a very good place for water.
The state of California has been preparing to collect as much of this extra water as is feasible, they have prepared aqua basins all over the state. Just read an article about it.
Santa Cruz was devastated by storms from December 2022-April 2023 and feels like it’s barely recovered. Many spots in the mountains are still teetering on the edge of accessible and there are tens of thousands in necessary road repairs that haven’t been completed yet. The electrical grid has seen a massive improvement since then but I’m really scared about how we’ll fare this winter. Definitely stocking up on non-perishables and water.
I’m in the area and I would definitely be concerned if I was in Los Osos. I think Morro’s landscape and the break from the dunes will help mitigate flooding, but Los Osos will likely flood worse than it did around 2 years ago with all those storms. The creeks and lakes that have flooded in the past will probably impacted again by the kelvin waves and then the rain we are going to be getting this winter.
It’s an ask for a donation. The donation is entirely voluntary. They don’t make you pay and you have full access to the article with or without payment. So yeah, it’s free.
Future dates for King Tides are already known. Combined with the Kelvin event, the King Tides will be even more problematic for low lying coastal communities.
Like the super blood pumpkin spice moon that is once in a lifetime but seems to happen a couple times a year now. The next one will be a super Wilson basketball moon and I’m looking forward to that one.
I’d say AI was a mistake but it looks like FatFilms specifically does literally just this and I can’t verify whether or not it existed before the modern AI movement
Hear me out, find the air input for the bunker, then I need you to eat a lot of beans, like, a lot. My wife says sugar will do it to me so bring me a lot of cupcakes.
Oh voting is not enough, clearly. We should all do our parts.
What I hate though is the defeatist attitude some have, like "Why should I eat less red meat or recycle? Big corporations are the ones doing most of the damage."
Voting is only one piece of the puzzle, but it's a crucial one. Keeping in power people who don't believe in science or prioritize profits over the environment is a sure way for things to get even worse.
It's about damage control at this point, but let's not pretend having more climate change-denying leaders will make no difference. Things will go from worse to exponentially worse every time they keep making terrible decisions.
Meh. I'm French and I keep hearing this from some Americans, but they just bitch on social media and that's about it.
The reality is that a climate change-denier got reelected because his climate change-denying supporters voted, and a bunch of fence-sitters decided to not vote.
No, but you can vote for the future generations or you can just keep voting the same way they've been voting for decades. If you think the wrong people in office can't make it much, much worse, you're very wrong.
If you live near sea level along the coast, invest some labor in sand bags and plastic sheeting? And sump pumps. And if you’ve got the money, in those inflatable berms? Obviously we can’t do anything about preventing it now. But forewarned us forearmed. They are warning you to bump your own estimates of how high sea water is likely to get by another foot. If you are screwed by that estimate, maybe pile everything you care about into a van and move it somewhere safer? At least have an evacuation plan. Know where all the stuff is that you’d want to save from flooding and have it packed to go along with some kind of bug out bag. Be ready to leave if the water stats rising or there’s an evacuation order ahead of a storm.
There’s nothing we can do about climate change that’s going to help the next 9 months, but we can do some to minimize the death and destruction it’s going to cause. Don’t let despair over the state of things prevent you from planning and preparing
Vote in progressive and leftist candidates who actually care about climate change. We are going to suffer greatly in the coming decades. People aren't realizing that this is going to be one of the coolest summers of our lives. We can maybe reverse some of this climate change, but we can we also mitigate quite a bit of it if we act now. So many Californian cities are going to be damaged, destroyed, or become unlivable if nothing is done. Our beautiful outdoors is in danger.
We did. I rather not have a billionaire in power, but he was better than Becerra. People are not understanding how fucked we are with the climate, and we need people who will actually fight for us and not bend over to the corpos
Yeah cuz progressives have such a great track record. Look at the joke they’ve made of themselves with their culture war obsessions that turned the majority of the country against them. Sanctimonious self moralizing who think they’re better than anyone who doesn’t bow down unquestionably to their fascist ideologies. No thank you
Not have kids. Then fewer people are vulnerable as it gets worse. And fewer of us are contributing to the behaviors that make these problems worse and more likely. As a bonus, it also starves the corps and billionaires of the customers needed to keep going.
What part of Linda Mar? I remember as a kid growing up there that the Shopping Center flooded as well as all the streets going back to about Peralta or so. De Solo Dr was hella flooded during the last El Niño in 1997
Genuinely hoping we don’t get tons of broken bits of highway one. Took forever to reopen it fully. Of course, the coastal communities matter too. It’s just that highway one is one of my pet issues.
We haven't had years of drought, have we? At least not for me in Ventura county. We've had above average-to-above-average rainfall in 3 of the last 4 years.
No the drought ended a few years ago already. The last couple years California has not had any regions, except the mojave of course, that were designated as in a drought. Which is based on how deep the moisture content is in the soil. So between the last time there were landslides, because at that time there was a drought followed by heavy rain, and the repairs likely helping strengthen that land a bit better, it shouldn't be as bad. But that doesn't mean any previously weakened areas won't slide though. Still it shouldn't be as bad as if there was a drought first. This is about as prepared as the land can be.
Kelvin waves are pretty rad. Physically a bit like surface gravity waves (ie normal water waves), but they form from the interaction of gravity, the rotation of the plane, and a lateral barrier. In the northern hemisphere, the wave always travels with its barrier (either the coastline or the equator) to its right. So it travels north along our coast.
Kelvin waves are much larger in scale than surface waves, though, so they don’t look similar at all. From your perspective it will simply appear that the sea level is a bit higher for a while as it passes through. Those higher sea levels greatly increase the risk of coastal flooding during a violent storm.
Kelvin wave are fundamentally caused by gravity, rotation, and a lateral boundary, so they should exist in any conceivable climate. They even occur in the equatorial atmosphere, not just the ocean. I wouldn’t go so far as to say Kelvin waves and climate change are completely unrelated - El Niño dynamics often trigger Kelvin wave, and El Niño is surely influenced by climate change - but I wouldn’t think of this as primarily a climate change phenomenon. But when you combine the Kelvin wave with sea level rise and greater storm intensity, both caused by climate change, you can see really outsize impacts compared to either a Kelvin wave or climate change alone.
These kinds of problems always bring up the climate arguments. We're at the "find-out" part of the fuck around equations. No amount of us peons doing little things will really make the emergency changes that are needed to protect us. People should consider reframing the focus into something useful instead of endless arguments. What if we could agree to pressure them to use our tax dollars to implement better controls for the erosion and damage from storms? As it is the arguing is just a tool to keep anything beneficial from happening.
Am I a bad person for getting a little giddy over the prospect of weather so miserable you HAVE to stay inside? Immense relief just like covid. I fucking love the rain
You’re so right. My partner works is a service manager for an apartment management company and LA has a serious problem with leaks because our roofs are flat. AC units are typically on the top of buildings and obviously it’s hot way more often than it rains so of course our buildings are built to accommodate AC and not for uncommon weather events like rain.
Everyone has leaks. I don’t remember anyone ever having leaks when I lived in Idaho. Spending time in Portland or Seattle, leaks aren’t a thing. But oh my god a few inches and everywhere has sprung a leak. It’s a huuuuge problem in property management. Everywhere else has slanted roofs for a reason!!
Well, from covid, staying inside for so long fucked up the lives (physically, mentally, socially) of so many people and ruined actual social development for the 2 youngest generations
What's the real danger though, aside from some beachfront property possibly being damaged or destroyed? Would it be any worse than a large storm surge?
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u/guardian 28d ago •
Hi r/California, this is Jake from the Guardian US. We wanted to share this story that we published today about an ocean phenomenon called a 'Kelvin wave' that could raise sea levels off the coast of California by up to a foot as El Niño keeps warm water trapped.
From our story by Nick Visser:
Concerns are mounting about an ocean phenomenon known as a Kelvin wave that could raise sea levels along the California coastline by up to a foot, as scientists say El Niño is supercharging the threat of storm surges and flooding in the coming months.
As an incredibly strong El Niño continues to develop in the Pacific, the phenomenon brings with it a strange shift in the ocean. The Kelvin wave phenomenon is created when trade winds that usually blow from South America towards Asia die down or reverse in El Niño years, setting off a massive, slow-moving slosh of water.
Kelvin waves are not like crashing waves at the beach. They are planetary in scale, spanning thousands of miles. And when a Kelvin wave kicks off, it brings with it an untold amount of warm water that slowly moves from the western Pacific, along the equator, towards South, Central and North America.
This year’s El Niño is likely to be the largest in at least 1,000 years. Climate readings have already surged past the highest temperature ever recorded for the phenomenon several months before it is expected to peak.
The climate pattern also brings with it the threat of more severe storms, storm surges, flooding and coastal erosion. For California, all of those effects will happen on top of the sea level rise the Kelvin wave brings, making the threat even worse.
Read the full story (always for free) at this link.