Saving Seafood

The El Niño stars are aligning in record-breaking ways. Here’s how the high tides stack up

October 16, 2026 — With homes nearly toppling into the ocean and back-to-back floods and hurricanes amplifying our sense of dread, keeping track of all things El Niño can be overwhelming.

So I called up Patrick Barnard, who spent years leading the U.S. Geological Survey’s renowned coastal hazards team in California and now helms key climate adaptation research at UC Santa Cruz. A maestro at bringing together all manner of data, Barnard broke down the numbers in no-nonsense terms — explaining why the coming weeks and months might bring extreme flooding like we’ve never seen before.

“All the stars are aligning for a pretty dramatic winter,” said Barnard, as he pored over the El Niño tea leaves, so to speak, and rattled off every high tide phenomenon on track to converge by the holidays. “If you start stacking all these things up, the flood risk just goes up exponentially.”

To start, the waters off the California coast have been the hottest they have ever been at this time of year. Multiple temperature records have been shattered, and an intense marine heat wave has been churning since last December — making our typical high tides even higher — El Niño notwithstanding.

Warm water, put simply, expands, whereas cold water takes up less space. And this heat wave alone, Barnard explained, has already made sea level rise temporarily by about 6 inches.

Now add El Niño on top of these 6 inches. Historically, El Niño can raise water levels along the West Coast by an additional 6 to 12 inches throughout the winter, and key indicators for this season are already pointing to a supercharged El Niño.

Read the full article at the LA Times

NOAA to rebuild historic science lab in Beaufort, North Carolina

August 28, 2026 — Today, NOAA announced plans to fund the reconstruction of a new laboratory in Beaufort, North Carolina. This new lab will replace the former building that was permanently closed in 2024 due to significant hurricane-related structural damage. The project will be funded using $64 million from the 2025 Disaster Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act. Design and preconstruction work is expected to begin in early 2027.

Established in 1899, the NOAA Beaufort Laboratory is the nation’s second-oldest federal marine science laboratory, predating NOAA by more than 70 years. Following a routine inspection, NOAA determined the laboratory sustained foundational damage that made building occupancy unsafe. The new facility will be built above the floodplain and designed to withstand storm and flooding events.

Read the full article at NOAA Fisheries

El Niño could bring highest sea levels ever recorded to CA coast

August 11, 2026 — A strengthening El Niño could bring the highest sea levels ever recorded to the California coast this year, raising the risk of widespread and damaging flooding.

It’s the latest effect forecast for what’s expected to be an historically strong event, one forecasters warn could also lash Southern California with powerful rain and broil both land and sea with punishing heat waves.

“We’re expecting likely the highest sea levels ever recorded on the California coast associated with this event,” said Mark Merrifield, director of the UC San Diego Scripps Institution of Oceanography’s Center for Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation.

During a recent online town hall, Merrifield presented a NASA satellite image showing sea levels already more than half a foot higher in the eastern Pacific Ocean compared to the reference state, and said by this fall and winter, “we should be seeing sea levels far above the average seasonal cycle.”

According to NASA, El Niño’s warmer ocean water displaces colder water close to the sea surface. Warmer water causes a rise in the sea surface height because water expands as temperature rises.

Data collected by scientists over the years also have shown how El Niños contribute to “enormously strong” waves, which can cause beaches to “erode and to narrow,” Merrifield said. “It’s well documented that during El Niño events, beaches across the entire state tend to move landward by about 30 meters [98 feet] or so.”

Read the full article at the Seattle Times