Waves along parts of California coast are getting bigger and badder due to climate change, new study says

The average height of winter waves along parts of the California coast have increased by as much as 1 foot since 1970 largely due to climate change, increasing the threat of sea cliff collapses, according to a new study by UC San Diego.

“The dividing line was 1970, when global warming began to accelerate,” said Peter Bromirski, a researcher at UCSD’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the lead author of the paper, which was published Tuesday in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Ocean.“Warming puts more energy into the atmosphere, and you end up with stronger storms, which produce stronger winds and higher waves,” he said.

Storms triggered landslides in the Big Sur area that closed parts of Highway 1 for months, whipped up waves that largely destroyed the Capitola Wharf near Santa Cruz, and produced a dangerous bluff collapse in the Blacks Beach section of La Jolla. When waves reach shore some of their energy is reflected back into the sea, he said. That energy interacts with other incoming waves, producing a pressure signal that turns into seismic waves at the seafloor. Those signals are directly related to the height of each wave.

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