{"id":69855,"date":"2026-08-24T20:05:31","date_gmt":"2026-08-24T20:05:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/69855\/"},"modified":"2026-08-24T20:05:31","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T20:05:31","slug":"super-el-nino-california-coast-faces-winter-of-big-waves-erosion-flooding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/69855\/","title":{"rendered":"Super El Nino: California coast faces winter of big waves, erosion, flooding"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A rare convergence of a powerful El Ni\u00f1o, super king tides and sea level rise<\/a> spurred by climate change could menace California with record coastal flooding this winter. <\/p>\n

Already, officials are observing higher tides than typical. Swells are eroding beaches, damaging parking lots and bathrooms, and even resurfacing long-buried coastal infrastructure. <\/p>\n

And that\u2019s before El Ni\u00f1o even kicks into high gear. <\/p>\n

Jonathan Warrick, a research geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, said that the climate pattern \u2014 commonly viewed as a rainmaker in Southern California \u2014 also turbocharges the sea. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a phenomena during El Ni\u00f1os where the waters offshore California get warmer, and they actually rise up, up to a foot, sometimes more, higher than average,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

That may not seem like much, but it\u2019s more than enough to wreak havoc on lower-lying homes and coastal infrastructure. Over the past 125 years, the average sea level in San Francisco Bay, for example, has already risen by about 1 foot \u2014 an increase experts link to human-caused climate change. <\/p>\n

\u201cFolks who really think about coastal risks are very concerned that the single-highest sea levels on record are quite possible this winter in California,\u201d said Daniel Swain, a UC climate scientist. \u201cAnd that is going to be a problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Chart <\/p>\n

The monthly average sea level in San Francisco Bay has risen due to sea level rise over the past decades. An El Ni\u00f1o can further raise sea levels.<\/p>\n

(Mark Merrifield \/ Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego)<\/p>\n

This pattern has happened before. During the \u201cvery strong\u201d El Ni\u00f1os of 1982-83 and 1997-98, as well as the \u201cstrong\u201d El Ni\u00f1o of 2023-24, San Francisco Bay logged record monthly average sea levels.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fact that our seas will be higher than average is a very concerning factor for coastal erosion and wave impact on cliffs and other structures near the coast, for coastal flooding,\u201d Warrick said.<\/p>\n

That can be doubly true if El Ni\u00f1o lives up to its rainy reputation. Rain falling on land looks for a place to drain. \u201cIf the oceans are higher,\u201d Warrick said, \u201cthen it\u2019s harder for that water to get off the landscape.\u201d <\/p>\n

El Ni\u00f1o, a climate pattern characterized<\/a> by warmer ocean waters in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, is already causing sea levels to rise off the coast of Latin America. That\u2019s because ocean water expands as it heats. <\/p>\n

In June, NASA released a visualization<\/a> showing sea levels were more than half a foot higher than baseline off the Pacific coast of Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and Panama. <\/p>\n

\"Areas <\/p>\n

Areas in red show sea levels having risen by more than half a foot as of June 1.<\/p>\n

(NASA image via presentation by Mark Merrifield of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography)<\/p>\n

Now, \u201cwater levels are already half a foot to a foot above average\u201d along much of the South American Pacific coast, Swain said. \u201cSimilarly, as we go up through Central America and up the west coast of Mexico and into the Gulf of California, water levels are similarly now approaching or even exceeding a foot above average in this region.\u201d <\/p>\n

For months, parts of the California coast have been experiencing a marine heat wave<\/a> unrelated to El Ni\u00f1o. But \u201cit is possible that the most recent heating off Southern California within the week of August 15th may finally be the result of some more direct warming due to El Ni\u00f1o drivers,\u201d according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration\u2019s marine heat wave tracker.<\/a> <\/p>\n

On Wednesday and Thursday, tides were coming in about 6 inches higher than the official forecast in San Diego, the Port of Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and Mendocino County\u2019s Arena Cove; 5 inches higher in San Francisco and Santa Monica; and 4 inches higher in Monterey. In Humboldt County\u2019s North Spit, near Eureka, tides were 9 inches higher than forecast. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019re observing is actually tides that are … 4 to 6 inches above predicted. And that\u2019s quite a bit,\u201d said Jeremy Smith, a coastal engineer with the California Coastal Commission. <\/p>\n

But what will be exceptionally bad timing for California\u2019s coast is that, as El Ni\u00f1o\u2019s full influence comes to bear, the king tides will<\/a> be even higher than normal. <\/p>\n

Every year, California gets hit with those highest high tides roughly around the summer and winter solstices. <\/p>\n

But there are also longer cycles \u2014 the 18.6-year lunar node and 4.4-year lunar perigee tidal cycles \u2014 that \u201carise from small changes in the orbit of the moon\u201d and affect its tide-generating force on ocean waters, according to Reinhard Flick, a researcher at the UC San Diego Scripps Institution of Oceanography. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe are near the peaks of those cycles this year. That means that around Christmastime, California will see some very strong king tides that will superpose on the high sea levels caused by El Ni\u00f1o,\u201d said<\/a> Mark Merrifield, director of the Scripps\u2019 Center for Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation.<\/p>\n

The 4.4-year tide cycle also peaked during the 1982-83 El Ni\u00f1o, contributing to coastal flooding in California, according to a study published in the Journal of Physical Oceanography in 1985. <\/p>\n

The highest tides are expected to hit on Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Eve and Jan. 22. Should they coincide with winter storms, coastal erosion, flooding and damage are likely, Flick said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt looks like around December we\u2019re going to see some of the highest tides that we ever get in this geologic epoch. So we\u2019re going to see tides, king tides, this year that are several inches higher than even the highest king tides of recent years,\u201d Swain said. <\/p>\n

The 1982-83 winter season, which coincided with a very strong El Ni\u00f1o, was historically destructive for California\u2019s coast, with storms wrecking the Santa Monica and Seal Beach piers. <\/p>\n

While El Ni\u00f1o\u2019s anticipated effects don\u2019t always materialize, on the coast \u201cwe tend to get stronger storms offshore, which mean that we get bigger waves reaching our coastline,\u201d Smith said.<\/p>\n

That does two things. Waves crash higher onto beaches, and they pull more sand into the water \u2014 causing more erosion and creating hazards for near-coast buildings.<\/p>\n

That also poses a potential for extreme flooding in low-lying areas such as Mission Beach in San Diego, Newport Beach, Sunset Beach and the community of Surfside in Seal Beach; as well as areas of Long Beach, including the Peninsula and Belmont Shore.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose are all very low-lying beachfront developments. So, when we get really high tide, there\u2019s the potential for waves to overtop the beach and cause flooding into those streets and overwhelm the storm drains,\u201d Smith said. <\/p>\n

Besides attracting super-high tides, the El Ni\u00f1o climate pattern makes above-average precipitation over Southern California more likely. The winter of 1982-83 was California\u2019s wettest in 131 years of record-keeping, according to Alex Tardy, a former meteorologist for the National Weather Service office in San Diego. <\/p>\n

\"California <\/p>\n

California is expected to get above-average precipitation this winter, according to the National Weather Service\u2019s Climate Prediction Center.<\/p>\n

(Climate Prediction Center)<\/p>\n

Forecasters expect this winter will be wet for California and the rest of the southern U.S. The weather service\u2019s Climate Prediction Center said Thursday it expected much of California will probably have above-average precipitation during January, February and March.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A rare convergence of a powerful El Ni\u00f1o, super king tides and sea level rise spurred by climate…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":69856,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[27376,36187,55,3069,1436,4398,8,36189,7470,9,36186,1899,1438,36188,7,3070,5864,1349],"class_list":["post-69855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-top-stories","tag-beach","tag-big-wave","tag-california","tag-coast","tag-flooding","tag-foot","tag-headlines","tag-high-tide","tag-inch","tag-news","tag-powerful-el-nino","tag-san-diego","tag-sea-level-rise","tag-tide","tag-top-stories","tag-water","tag-winter","tag-year"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@news\/117152286242214670","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69855\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}