Invited to be a part of California State University, Long Beach’s Engineering Distinguished Lecture Series, four panelists discussed the challenges for the area if an upcoming El Niño does offer just a little too much rain for the state to handle.
Mark Jackson is the meteorologist in charge at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Weather Service office. He described El Niño as a weather phenomenon characterized by a warming phase in the equatorial Pacific Ocean combined with a reversal of the usual trade-wind pattern. With an El Niño, trade winds blow from west to east.
Jackson said that there is a 95-percent chance that El Niño conditions will continue through the winter. Jackson said that one media outlet had misunderstood the 95-percent figure and reported in error that there would be a 95-percent chance that there would be an El Nino storm.
He stressed that it doesn’t mean that there is a 95-percent chance that we will have an El Niño storm.
“El Niño is a season of storms,” Jackson said. “All it means is that you have a higher number of storms within a season.”
He warned that the drought won’t be over in California, even if El Niño does provide a lot of rain in the next few months.
“It takes more than one season,” he said. “Unfortunately, much of that rain washes away into the ocean, and it’s runoff. What we need actually are multiple seasons of rebuilding that snowpack.”
The memories of the last major El Niño season in 1997-98 were fresh for many in the audience. Some, like Russell Boudreau, vice president and senior coastal engineer for Moffatt & Nichol in Long Beach, even remembered what it was like under the El Niño season in 1982-83.
He showed pictures of the devastation along the California coastline from Malibu to San Diego. And to drive his point closer to home, he offered photographs of a previously flooded Seal Beach during one of the El Niño seasons.
Boudreau acknowledged that there are still areas that may be vulnerable to flooding, but he added that there are ways to help mitigate some of the damage that heavy rains combined with high tides and powerful waves could cause.
He noted that communities can maintain the beaches by adding sand to the shoreline to provide a sacrificial buffer for large waves to hit first. Boudreau said that Seal Beach chose to do exactly that.
He acknowledged that other ways to buffer the effect of the high tides and waves are more controversial. He noted that the California Coastal Commission has criticized the use of a sea wall to protect the shores. The other options might feel a little worse. Boudreau said that some homeowners could choose to allow water to flood just the first floor as long as the structure could handle the damage. There is also the option to just retreat from the area, he added.
A few of the speakers urged prioritization of the systems to predict and plan for major weather events.
Pamela Emch, an engineering fellow at the Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems, stressed the importance of maintaining the satellite systems that provide the necessary data for weather prediction.
“Every single system that you could think of is impacted by the weather,” Emch said. “Everybody’s interested in it, but it’s not necessarily a national priority, interestingly. It comes down to budget.”
Budget is a sensitive issue for Kevin Bryan, a senior principal geologist with Leighton Consulting. He emphasized the importance of thinking beyond the next season of storms. He stressed continued education and regulation of trash and specifically plastic waste.
“We have to pay it forward,” he said, emphasizing the need for low-impact development and tackling the environmental issues with storm water. He urged increase use of pervious pavements, bioswales and green spaces.
“These small improvements to these large systems have to be funded in city and county capital-improvement plans,” he said, “rather than pushing it out to wait for the next El Niño to happen.”
