Earlier this month, a tropical storm sent huge waves crashing onto Southern California’s coastline, damaging homes and other structures.
In Ventura County, waves washed away large boulders protecting the Pacific Coast Highway, threatening the PCH. Emergency repairs are underway.
This could be just a sign of what’s to come. El Niño could create powerful storm activity which could pound our coastline and threaten structures like the Ventura Pier.
Adding to the danger is a little-known phenomenon called a Kelvin wave.
"Do you drink coffee in the morning?" asked Dan Reineman, Associate Professor of Environmental Science at Cal State Channel Islands. He likened it to a Kelvin wave.
"If you blow gently across the top of your mug, you'll notice your breath pushed the coffee across the mug. It'll pile up a little deeper on one side, and it will be a little shallower on the other. The same thing is happening in the ocean, on a much larger scale."
Kelvin waves go unnoticed by surfers, swimmers, or boaters.
"In the Pacific, we have trade winds that are generally blowing steadily west across the ocean along the equator, piling up water on the west side of the Pacific," explained Reineman. "During El Niño conditions, those constant winds will weaken or slacken. It's the same if you stop blowing on your coffee mug. These Kevin waves are just piled-up water sloshing its way back and forth across the Pacific."
He said it's less like a wave than a rise of 6 to 12" in sea level that happens over the course of weeks and months, and then decreases.
Several Kevin Waves are headed our way over the next few months.
But Reineman added that, if you add this on top of strong El Niño storm activity, it could spell trouble for coastal areas.
"It all depends on probabilities. This could be quite a winter for us in terms of storm damage or erosion."
Kelvin waves aren’t new, but they're getting more attention from the media and the public.
Reineman discussed some of his research on surf and waves.
"One of our papers recently looked at how global climate is affecting surf breaks. It's a bit of a bad-news-good-news result. Surf breaks are indeed quite sensitive to the kinds of impacts climate change will have on our coasts. But they are also sensitive to the decisions that coastal communities make in terms of taking care of those coasts."
