Difficulty: Summiteer (Level 3)
For years, residents of one Southern California beach town could walk a mile along a stretch of cream-coloured sand and dip their toes in the waves.
However, that walk has been cut short. Coastal erosion has been eating away at the beach in San Clemente, known for nearly a century as a “Spanish village by the sea”. The rising sea and crashing waves have pushed the shoreline landward.
It’s one of many California coastal communities grappling with the effects of rising sea levels. Nearly a decade ago, scientists forecast that more than half of Southern California’s beaches could significantly erode by 2100.
After years of erosion, California is bracing for flooding and landslides ahead of this year’s expected super El Nino, a temporary warming in parts of the equatorial Pacific known to warp weather worldwide.
A recent study showed that El Nino events are getting stronger because of human-caused climate change.
