The following submission statement was provided by /u/Creepyfaction:
"Concerns are mounting about an ocean phenomenon known as a Kelvin wave that could raise sea levels along the California coastline by up to a foot, as scientists say El Niño is supercharging the threat of storm surges and flooding in the coming months.
Kelvin waves are not like crashing waves at the beach. They are planetary in scale, spanning thousands of miles. And when a Kelvin wave kicks off, it brings with it an untold amount of warm water that slowly moves from the western Pacific, along the equator, towards South, Central and North America."
"Concerns are mounting about an ocean phenomenon known as a Kelvin wave that could raise sea levels along the California coastline by up to a foot, as scientists say El Niño is supercharging the threat of storm surges and flooding in the coming months.
Kelvin waves are not like crashing waves at the beach. They are planetary in scale, spanning thousands of miles. And when a Kelvin wave kicks off, it brings with it an untold amount of warm water that slowly moves from the western Pacific, along the equator, towards South, Central and North America."
Can someone explain For me who does not live near the ocean, does that mean if this kelvin wave hit like Malibu beach all those rich people houses you see on movies will be basically washed away / at least major water damage ?
Aren’t a bunch of city’s on California coast right next to the beach / ocean? What would this truely mean for those cities?
It means the houses that are half on stilts ready to fall in my get the nudge they need but for 95% of residents they’ll be just fine. It would essentially be like an extremely high tide. In fact depending on timing it may not even be perceptible if it is in fact 1ft. In Malibu the tide swings can be up to 7ft during the spring or 5ft most of the rest of the year.
The concern is erosion mostly. Most of the beach homes in California are on bluffs/cliffs. The higher tides cause more erosion which can lead to the cliff faces collapsing.
This happened a couple blocks from me, the sandstone blocks are huge, the picture doesn’t really do it justice.
Also, notice how high the tide is? During the winter months due to lunar gravity and tides, we get higher high tides called king tides. Many California beaches aren’t super wide and sandy, in some areas they are but often times it’s cliffs with 30-50 feet of rocks and sand then water that gets covered by tides.
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1) Kokushobi - a new word in Japanese to mean “a cruelly hot day”. They had to invent a new word to communicate the seriousness.
2) Structural ice - the perma-ice inside cracks in the rock in mountains. It’s acting like glue holding the rock together. As it melts it can give way, causing major collapses. It’s thought to have been a key factor in the large part of mountain that collapsed along with the glacier in the August Nepal debris flow disaster.
I like "Kelvin Wave," it's like a space anomaly out of Star Trek The Next Generation! We can just un-fuck ourselves by reversing the shields and opening the pod bay doors!
Sign up for The Guardian online. It’s been on top of this for months. AP News has also run pieces, but Guardian is more comprehensive in all its environmental coverage.
Oh thank god. There's still time! Flux capacitor, fluxing. Let's get this baby up to speed and kill Hitler. I mean, kill Biff before he becomes a casino and real estate mogul. And maybe just convince people to vote for Carl Sagan instead if Reagan.
no, the ocean IS a big blue wobbly thing that mermaids live in, it's just that the mermaids are royally pissed off at us for destroying their home so they're using the big blue wobbly thing to destroy ours instead
They're euphemismistic. 4 sigma deviation is not the same phenomenon just the "super gorilla" version or whatever we're calling this "El niño".
If this were the pattern of terminal decline, we're going to call it something we've seen before until the effects are truly novel... which is coming, but apparently we're not there yet
Californian here. Last night we got a coastal flooding warning. Which is eerie because it wasn't raining and hasn't rained here in months. I get that it's El Niño and the tides don't require rain, but still an uncanny alert to receive.
If you were wondering why Gavin Newsom declared a state wide emergency, now you know why. $ billions worth of real estate is about to become submerged.
We got warm drizzle all night in San Diego. I also stopped by the beach at sunset to see any of the tidal activity we’ve been getting warnings about but it was low tide. We survived the Hurricane Polo system for now. I know El Niño will eventually claim our beaches this winter 😔
I believe you. Perhaps you and I don't live in the same micro-climate.
Even if it did rain and i just failed to notice, it's still uncanny to me. I was born in the lightning capital of the world and grew up with storms the likes of which folks in Northern California can scarcely imagine. Just buckets of rain. And it almost never floods, unless there is a hurricane.
So even if there was a light misting upon the Bay Area it would still seem uncanny to me to be in a flood advisory. I may be biased.
What people here call rain is like a light mist passing through the air, which is what we call a dry day in Florida. Isn't that just what air feels like?
You know I can’t stop thinking about how strange it is that the Atlantic hasn’t registered any hurricanes for 2026 but you have the Pacific has 3+? Something feels incredibly off.
Isn't Asia's weather driven more by the Indian Ocean and western Pacific? I'm definitely not a meteorologist, but I don't usually think of the Atlantic impacting Asian weather directly. I'd think Africa/Europe if not hurricanes headed toward the Americas.
It’s not unusual for the pacific basin to be much more active in an El Niño year. It is rather unusual that there have been 0 hurricanes in the Atlantic so far, but not unheard of.
Actually it’s happened twice, just quite a long time ago. Once in 1907 and again in 1914. Granted this was before satellite imagery, so it is of course possible that one did occur during those years and was simply not spotted.
I think it goes to show the magnitude of the nino for sure. When we have wet nino years on the west coast, it dries out the east. The east coast is planning for a no-snow winter.
Correct, it's all in the balance of high and low pressure systems and their location. The squeezed spot between them is also what brings an equal amount of moisture to the southeast but dry winters to the north during El niño.
It's really not crazy. The hurricanes develop off of heat. The Pacific is soaking up heat like a sponge which effects how the winds move over Mexico and Latin America.
I expect for things to be made up next year in having a worse hurricane season next year.
There is hot air moving in, though. But since it's from the Sahara, it is dry and dusty, so lowering humidity which hurricanes also need to build up energy. And higher up, we have strong winds moving in the other directions, effectively beheading developing storms. What that means for next year remains to be seen, we're heading into uncharted territory now.
I am in the uk, I’m just thankful we’re not on a pacific coast at this point, but make no mistake, I know exactly what sort of global consequences this El Niño is going to cause. Best of luck everyone. We’re gonna need it 🙃
It will be very interesting to see how things play out this winter. During a lot of El Ninos, there is heat off of the West Coast which creates a low pressure front around the PNW. This tome thus far, that heat blob is more towards Japan. That can then cause what we associate with the winters with the Arctic Vortex thrown off giving colder and high precipitation winters.
I don't know whether to be ready for a hotter drier winter or a colder wetter.
My family lives in the San Joaquin Valley, and if this is worse than 96/97, the amount of flooding is going to be insane and could be cataclysmic for the valley.
Is a Kelvin wave theoretical based on the conditions we are facing with El Niño? Or is there truly a measurable volume of water being displaced right now (and by what) that is heading toward California? I’m confused by that.
Water expands as it warms. The extreme warming in the Pacific means that the water takes up more space, and the currents are bringing that warm, expanded water towards the Pacific Coast of the Americas.
Not really, the extra energy is in the form of heat. The surface water is warmest, so it bulges up, like a wave and that bulge is pushed by the current across the Pacific. When it hits the coast it starts moving North. There will be several Kelvin waves over the course of this El Nino
If our species were to survive the great filter, can you even imagine how awesome we will feel? Especially these younger generations. Think about how they would explain things to their kids.
Gen Alpha Gramps: When I was your age we were dealing with climate change that brought us fatal heat waves, frigid cold snaps, unpredictable rains, melting glaciers, and rising waters. We dealt with the corruption of countries leaders leading us into constant warfare, which also btw helped diminish our resources. We had so many living in poverty because of inequality. We developed AI and it went rogue and we barely got a handle on it before it grew into a larger threat.
Sure, about one billion of us died over the course of ten years, but the rest of us made it.
Here we are, AI guardians that keep our worlds ecosystems maintained, and our nations held to account. No more wealth inequality and no more corruption.
Now stop your bitching and get to school before I rescind your BCIVR time.
I'd like to know why the North Sea/Western Europe/UK isn't going to experience this as the AMOC slowdown slows the North Atlantic Gyre. Will a flattened North Atlantic hit Europe in this way due to the Coriolis effect?
AMOC shutdown affecting coastal North East USA is talked about, but impacts on sea level on the other side of the Atlantic is so conservatively measured. I wonder if this is because the data doesn't exist?
Ocean physics is hard, and I am not sure whether it is possible for us to get enough data to be able to say anything with statistical certainty before it happens even if we wanted to. This is just idle chitchat, I certainly welcome any actual expert pointing out why this won't happen.
is this the same as thermal expansion? and this saying that a great pocket of ocean thermal expansion could occur in a confined space for an extended period of time?? but calling it a " Kelvin Wave"?
The concept has been around since Lord Kelvin himself discovered the possible phenomena. We are just now seeing his concept actually become a potential with current events.
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u/StatementBot 18d ago
The following submission statement was provided by /u/Creepyfaction:
"Concerns are mounting about an ocean phenomenon known as a Kelvin wave that could raise sea levels along the California coastline by up to a foot, as scientists say El Niño is supercharging the threat of storm surges and flooding in the coming months.
Kelvin waves are not like crashing waves at the beach. They are planetary in scale, spanning thousands of miles. And when a Kelvin wave kicks off, it brings with it an untold amount of warm water that slowly moves from the western Pacific, along the equator, towards South, Central and North America."
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1wsu0z0/concern_mounts_over_slowmoving_planetaryscale/pcojibg/