San Diego's beaches are bouncing back after El Niño
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Scripps Institution of Oceanography researchers use drones to conduct 3D surveys of San Diego beaches. Photo: Courtesy of Erik Jepsen/UC San Diego
San Diego County beaches are growing again, signaling they've entered the recovery phase after El Nino last year, a new report shows.
Why it matters: It's good news for the health of our coasts, as wide, sandy beaches help protect against erosion and flooding while making beaches safer and more enjoyable for recreation.
Driving the news: UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography researchers released their annual beach report in November, which found most of the nine state beaches in the region grew in width last year.
- Scripps researchers also led a related and recently published study that found the width of beaches statewide has remained stable over nearly four decades despite significant erosion.
- Together, they show San Diego is not an anomaly, and what researchers are learning about beaches' resilience and behavior here could be applied across California, Scripps oceanographer William O'Reilly told Axios.
The big picture: El Niño amplifies extreme weather events, bringing storms and strong waves that pound and erode beaches.
What they're saying: "The sense that the system isn't necessarily losing sand as fast as we might have predicted was surprising," Scripps researcher and report co-author Mark Merrifield said. "It brings a slightly different perspective on long-term planning."
- "When you're in a bad El Niño winter and things look pretty grim, this is pointing to one or two years later, you might be on a pretty strong rebound," he said.
Zoom in: This past year's winter waves were milder than usual, which helped beaches' recovery, but some still need intervention, according to the researchers.
- San Elijo State Beach saw the most growth after being fed by recent sand replenishment projects.
- Carlsbad and southern Oceanside beaches struggled to recover because they're starved for sand. Those cities are tackling that problem with their own replenishment efforts that could be a model for other coastal cities.
The intrigue: Scripps researchers use LiDAR-equipped drones, trucks, ATVs and Jet Skis to survey local beaches, and they analyzed satellite images to track the changes at beaches across California.
- The data pulled from the satellites was surprising and encouraging, researchers said, as the tech will allow monitoring of California beaches in ways they've never been able to before.
What we're watching: San Diego County is planning its largest regional beach restoration project to date, which would pump three times as much sand onto the coastline as previous projects, with a $260 million price tag.