There are several reasons why we\u2019re seeing what appears to be an unprecedented onslaught of coastal flooding these last few months. <\/p>\n
Part of the issue is how intensely strong this El Ni\u00f1o is. El Ni\u00f1o is a climate pattern that occurs when temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean \u2014 essentially west of Peru \u2014 become warmer than normal. And sea surface temperatures are intensely hotter than normal.<\/p>\n
\u201cI call it El Ni\u00f1o Macho,\u201d said Josh Willis, a NASA climate scientist. \u201cIt\u2019s probably going to be be similar to or bigger than the 1997 one, which was, you know, like trillions of dollars of damage worldwide. It was a massive global event, and we\u2019re on track to be that big or bigger.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow we\u2019ve also had 20 years of climate change since then, right? So sea levels are higher,\u201d Willis said. <\/p>\n
Seawater levels have risen by about 1 foot off the California coast over the last 125 years. <\/p>\n
And temperatures are hitting eye-popping figures. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s more than 9 degrees warmer off of South America right now,\u201d Reinhard Flick, a researcher at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, said in an interview. And that\u2019s what\u2019s fueling what is shaping up to be an extraordinarily strong El Ni\u00f1o. <\/p>\n
At Scripps Pier in La Jolla, the sea surface temperature<\/a> Monday was 73.8 degrees, significantly above the average for the calendar day, which is 64.7 degrees. That\u2019s 9.1 degrees above average.<\/p>\n \u201cThe water was warm all year off of Southern California, but the El Ni\u00f1o is now enhancing that and keeping it warm, where naturally it would drop,\u201d Flick said. <\/p>\n At the Los Angeles Harbor in San Pedro on Monday, the sea level hit 8.02 feet above the baseline, which is defined as the average daily lowest-water level observed between 1983 and 2001. That broke the previous record set during another El Ni\u00f1o, on Jan. 10, 2005, when the sea level hit 7.93 feet. <\/p>\n The 8.02-feet reading came in 1.42 feet higher than what would be predicted by the position of the moon, Earth and sun alone, with the difference being \u201ccaused by a combination of thermal expansion due to the warmer waters off our coast and Kelvin wave contribution, on top of the baseline very high astronomical high tide,\u201d said David Gomberg, meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Oxnard.<\/p>\n On Monday, streets flooded from Newport Beach to Long Beach. As high tide peaked Monday morning, water surged from Newport Harbor onto the streets of the Balboa Peninsula, flooding some businesses in the Balboa Fun Zone. Crews worked to pump out the knee-high water and reinforce sandbags along the harbor side of the peninsula.<\/p>\n In Long Beach, residents reported flooding along Bayshore Beach, Naples and the peninsula. Nancy Pinckert, a resident of Naples, recorded video showing water leaking through the base of a seawall onto a walkway. \u201cThe Naples seawalls are undergoing profound stress during these current high tides,\u201d Pinckert said, who worries that the city hasn\u2019t done enough to replace the aging seawalls for her neighborhood. She said she\u2019s worried the November and December king tides \u201cwill breach the seawalls for the first time ever.\u201d<\/p>\n Share via Close extra sharing options <\/p>\n A Kelvin wave earlier this month passed off the California coast. It isn\u2019t a wave that is obviously visible at the sea surface and can\u2019t be surfed, and moves at only 6 mph, but it does move warmer water from the equatorial Pacific Ocean up and down the coast of the Americas, and along the California coast. Its arrival earlier in October, combined with the effects of the swells from Tropical Storm Rachel, contributed to dramatic flooding of homes on the Long Beach Peninsula and the streets of Newport Beach earlier this month. <\/p>\n Some Californians have noted how unnaturally warm the ocean has felt, and scientists agree. \u201cAbsolutely, it\u2019s highly unnatural, and it\u2019s bad for the ecology,\u201d Flick said. Sports fishermen might celebrate<\/a> the arrival of unusual fish, but \u201cif it persists, it\u2019s a serious event for the birds and for the plankton.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cA lot of the California coast is 5 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than average in terms of water temperature. … That really is enormous,\u201d Swain said. It\u2019s about 9 degrees hotter than average on the Central Coast, and 5 degrees warmer elsewhere off of Southern California and around the Farallon Islands west of San Francisco, he said. <\/p>\n A second reason is that we\u2019re near the peaks of some of the highest tides California ever sees over the course of the century \u2014 what\u2019s known as the 18.6-year lunar node and 4.4-year lunar perigee tidal cycles. They arise from small changes in the orbit of the moon and affect tide-generating forces, according to Flick. <\/p>\n That cycle is expected to cause even higher tides around the Thanksgiving, Christmas and Martin Luther King Jr. Day holidays. Should a strong storm arrive during those time periods, that could cause even more severe coastal flooding. <\/p>\n Something like that happened during the historic storm of late January 1983, which occurred during one of the strongest El Ni\u00f1os on record and battered the coast up and down California, damaging many piers. A strong storm arrived at precisely a time of the month when the tides were very high, according to Flick. <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cyclonicwx.com\/data\/sst\/oisst_sstrec_nepac.png\")
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