Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with UC Agriculture and Natural Resources, said the term “Super El Niño” is just a colloquial way to describe a “more extreme than merely strong” climate pattern.
“Super El Niño is not something magical, it’s not something new, that’s never happened before,” Swain said this week during his live-streamed “office-hours” series.
Swain said El Niños in 1982, 1997, and 2015 each resulted in “very different global effects” — ranging from record rainfall, which caused some Peruvian rivers to carry 1,000 times their normal flow in 1983, to severe drought in Ethiopia in 2015.
This year’s “Super El Niño,” Swain said, will result in a temporary sea level rise of around 6 inches in California.
“You have to add that number to climate change-caused sea level rise, which — depending on where you are in California — ranges from about 6 inches to a foot over the past century,” Swain said.
Beyond sustained sea level rise, scientists expect major storms and flooding starting this winter. They predict that these storms will be particularly strong as the effects of El Niño compound with the effects of climate change.
Bay Area residents should expect “significant implications for coastal flooding [and] for wind and surf damage along the coast,” Swain said, pointing to the large wave events in Santa Cruz and the king tide flooding in Marin last year as examples of what may be in store.
