Rising sea levels, weather changes could cause frequent floods.
By DAVID WHITING
COLUMNIST
THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Second tip: On Dec. 13, don't visit my friends for breakfast in their San Clemente home just a few feet from – and a few feet above – the ocean.
That's the date of this year's high tide. Time: 8:14 a.m. Height: 7.3 feet.
Yes, it'll be over the head of the tallest Laker.
According to some very smart and very experienced engineers, if there's a storm that morning with wind-whipped waves and winds blowing toward the shore, the combination could wreak havoc.
Which brings us to my third tip: Monitor weather.
That may sound pretty simple. But with oceans rising as much as 1/12 inch a year, we appear headed for some very weird weather.
And the future counts – especially if you hope to someday sell your home as a house, not as a fish hatchery.
• • •
I visit UC Irvine to listen to engineers explain how they're managing our rising seas – or hoping to manage our seas.
The shipping ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles appear to be well-prepared. The staffs are budgeting hundreds of millions of dollars to raise ground and infrastructure – electricity – to handle higher seas, bigger storms, more powerful storm surges.
Douglas Thiessen, Port of Long Beach managing director of engineering, says, "We have to decide today what's going to happen 100 years from now."
Thiessen makes a solid point. But coastal cities face a more complicated process for deciding what to do – and who pays.
If you live in low-lying coastal areas – parts of Seal Beach, Huntington Beach, Newport Beach, Laguna Beach, San Clemente – you may want to get a pair of fishing waders.
If nothing is done, Newport Beach Assistant City Engineer Robert Stein quips that in 90 years there's a good chance residents on Balboa Island during high tides "will get in kayaks and go downtown to get supplies."
Stein makes the comment lightly. But his prediction about rising sea levels is serious. What Stein doesn't mention is that the small business district, too, would be underwater.
You might say that 90 years is a long way off; let's worry about flooding when flooding happens.
It's happening.
• • •
Humans tend to be very good at forgetting bad stuff. That can be a good thing. But sometimes it can be dangerous.
Consider that Newport Beach – and I mention the city merely as an example – recorded flooding in 1969, 1978, 1980, 1983, 1992, 1995, 1998, 2005, 2010 and 2011.
Unlike most floods, the 2011 event was during summer.
Yes, summer.
On Aug. 31, 2011, a high-tide wave surge flooded the Balboa Pier parking lot.
Fourth tip: Don't join another of my fiends, the one who lives on Balboa Island for his 70th birthday. Not that he's sent out invitations. My pal won't turn 70 for two decades.
But unless the island sees costly improvements, Stein says, by 2032 there's a reasonable chance that some homes such as my friend's may be subjected to frequent floods.
Blame it on climate change, or simply blame it on the very real fact that ocean levels are rising.
• • •
When it comes to storm surges on the West Coast, true hurricanes such as Hurricane Sandy – at least for the foreseeable future – aren't much of a threat.
But there are four things that could create a perfect storm in Southern California – something we witnessed in 1983 when many of our piers were wiped away.
One: unusually high tides. Two: big waves. Three: an El Niño that usually also means an ocean rise of six inches to a foot. Four: offshore winds pushing water toward the coast. The result could easily mean a surge taller than two Lakers.
If you live near the coast, be glad this winter is predicted to be a mild El Niño year.
Oh, there's one more factor I left out of the perfect storm equation: climate change. With warming oceans and melting ice in Greenland and Antarctica, the math gets more, um, interesting.
Figure that since 1983, sea levels have risen about 2 inches. Compare 2 inches to a 7-foot tide with 10-foot waves – 17 feet total – and a few more inches of water hardly seems to matter.
But it matters a lot if an extra inch of surge means seawater through your home.
It gets worse.
The rate of increase in ocean levels is accelerating.
Professor Brett Sanders, chair of UC Irvine's Department of Civil and Environment Engineering, says in 2008, Orange County saw a 20-year high tide – but no storm.
Sanders says, "We dodged a bullet."
• • •
Stein explains one of his biggest challenges is convincing people to accept rising sea levels.
"We're dealing with residents who are skeptical of the science," Stein says. "People, reasonably, say this is beyond common sense.
"It's disorienting, but it appears to be a new fact of life."
Other challenges Stein faces are exactly how to offset increasing ocean levels and how to fund the construction.
Higher sea walls block rising seas and storm surges. But they also block views.
Raising streets and sidewalks is extremely expensive. And who pays? Balboa Island residents or all city residents?
And what should be done with private homes and businesses?
The questions require tough decisions.
We can discount individual professors or a collection of engineers. But it's tough to ignore the national academies, a body that includes the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council.
Here's what the national academy forecasts for Southern California: Sea levels will rise 1.5 to 12 inches by 2030, 5 to 24 inches by 2050, and 16.5 to 66 inches by 2100.
That's quite a range. So pick a number.
And bet your paddleboat skills on it.Source: http://www.ocregister.com/articles/storm-377950-beach-levels.html
--
Check out http://groups.yahoo.com/group/californiadisasters/
Read my blog at http://eclecticarcania.blogspot.com/
My Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/derkimster
Linkedin profile: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/kim-noyes/9/3a1/2b8
Follow me on Twitter @DisasterKim
__._,_.___
No comments:
Post a Comment