Climate change is coming; humanity be damned.
The seas are rising, ice caps are melting, polar bears are running, global temperature records are breaking, islands are sinking, and humans are screwed.
In addition to all the doom and gloom, however, there’s an unforeseen, supplementary side effect to climate change: the waves are getting bigger.
As seen recently in California, an El Niño-fueled run of swell slammed the coastline to close out 2023. It was big, historically big. Heavy water surf spots, like Mavericks just south of San Francisco, lit up for what many were calling the biggest waves in 10 years.
And some scientists are saying this is climate change at work.
Here’s a snippet from a recent NPR report, which delves into rising global temperatures and their impact on big surf:
“UC Santa Cruz oceanographer Gary Griggs has studied the California coastline for decades. He says that human-caused climate change will force seas to rise in the future, making waves even bigger. A Scripps Institution of Oceanography study from last summer found that California waves have grown, on average, a foot taller in the last 50 years as climate change has heated up the planet.”
And here’s the aforementioned Griggs:
“All the indications are that the water is going to continue to warm. It’s going to drive stronger winds, probably higher-intensity storms, greater wave power, bigger waves hitting more often.”
Per the Scipps Institution of Oceanography study, which was published last summer, the researchers found:
“The analysis revealed that in the era beginning after 1970, California’s average winter wave height has increased by 13% or about 0.3 meters (one foot) compared to average winter wave height between 1931 and 1969.”
So, what will our oceans look like in another 100 years? Will Mavericks see 100 foot waves breaking in bathwater temperatures?
Will humans be extinct anyways? Empty waves rolling through on a dead planet?
Dismal.
Hope they build wavepools on Mars.
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