Tracking El Nino's impact

Though El Niño has yet to pack the one-two punch meteorologists predicted, it is giving researchers such as UC Santa Barbara professors Ed Keller and Keith Clarke a glimpse into how California's coast might look a century from now.

With a Program Development Award from California Sea Grant, a UCSB team is tracking El Niño's influence on the state of beach and cliff erosion in Santa Barbara County, where higher sea levels and storms are expected to simulate future climate conditions. The investigators will quantify the extent of these coastal changes as a result of both the expected El Niño storms during the winter of 2015-2016 and the resultant rise in sea level.
"It's like we're looking at 50 to 100 years of California sea level rise," said Keller, a professor in UCSB's Department of Earth Science. "We're looking into a crystal ball of what the future will be like. So far, El Niño conditions have raised sea level 8 to 12 inches at our seven study sites, which range from Coal Oil Point Nature Reserve and coastal cliffs in Isla Vista to the open shores of Goleta Beach Park and Leadbetter Beach.


Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-02-tracking-el-nino-impact.html#jCp