While the rest of Southern California is treating this week’s stampede of winter storms like the end of days Bob Guza has been out digging holes in the sand. Guza, a researcher from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, is using the current massive storms recognized as the first real wave of El Niño activity on the West Coast to measure future sea level rise. He’s been doing so by burying sensors deep into the sand in Cardiff at low tide before more heavy rainfall finishes off the workweek.
“These sensors are going to be measuring the water depth and the height of waves,” Guza told KPBS. “The sensor basically weighs the height of the water. If it’s tall, it’s a heavy weight, and so we watch the weight or the pressure go up and down.”
The heavy rainfall coupled with the day’s high tides will simulate what Guza says could be the equivalent of 30 to 50 years of sea level rise. That’s a huge jump into the future in just one storm, but he suggests just those 15-20 centimeters of change can tell researchers how rising sea levels will impact the roads, sidewalks, and communities that are so close to the beach decades from now.
“To the extent that this is highly destructive – if it is – it’s scary because there’s more of it coming.”
