“It’s not a wave you can surf” or see but it will register on tidal instruments
By Anthony Edwards / Yahoo News – San Francisco Chronicle / September 2, 2026
Sea levels along the California coast are expected to rise by a foot as soon as late September, as El Niño-warmed tropical water pushes a slow-moving wave up the coast of North America.
The swell isn’t something seen crashing at a beach but a planetary-scale process known as a Kelvin wave that is triggered by changes in wind at the equator.
“It’s not a wave you can surf,” said Dillon Amaya, an assistant professor of marine science at North Carolina State University. “You’re not gonna be able to see it from your boat, but our instruments will see it as it passes by, like tide gages.”
The coastally-trapped Kelvin wave, as it’s called, originated along the equator and hit the South America coast before turning north at about 6 mph. It raised water levels about nine to 14 inches (relative to 1993-2025 averages) along the coast of Central America in late August. That surge will hit Cabo in late September and eventually reach San Francisco the first or second week of October.
The Kelvin waves won’t build on each other. Rather, sea level heights and temperatures will remain elevated for weeks, gradually subsiding before the next wave hits.
Water temperatures along the California coast are expected to increase as the wave arrives, because it will weaken coastal upwelling – the process that brings cold, deep water to the ocean surface near California. That will further warm near-shore water that is already as much as 6 degrees above normal in Southern California, according to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
Here’s how the Kelvin wave works: During El Niño, tropical trade winds frequently reverse direction and blow out of the west instead of the east, pushing warm water toward the coast of South America. When this water – which is also a foot or so higher than normal – hits the coast, its energy slithers up the Mexico coastline through the Gulf of California, along the U.S. West Coast and all the way to Alaska. This whole process takes months.
El Niño usually induces a series of coastally-trapped waves that keep water warmer and higher than normal the entire fall and winter along the California coast.
During the most recent strong El Niño, in 2015-16, “five, maybe six occurred over a period of a year or so,” Amaya said. “What we’re forecasting now is just one of potentially many that are coming.”
Monthly average sea levels in San Francisco Bay spiked by about a foot during El Niños in 1982-83, 1997-98 and 2023-24. Historically high seas are also expected this winter. (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration via the University of Hawaii Sea Level Center.)
The first of these coastally-trapped waves caused San Francisco’s highest summer tide on record, Amaya said. The city also saw a historically high July tide.
September and October tides are among the lowest of the year, so the sudden rise in sea levels probably won’t cause immediate coastal flooding, but it is an ominous sign for winter.
California’s highest king tides are predicted on Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day, with another in late January. Water levels will probably rival the highest in recorded history, even without a nearby storm.
“If we get big waves coming at the same time, (flooding) is gonna be worse,” said Gary Griggs, a professor of earth sciences at UC Santa Cruz.
A double whammy of king tides and storm surge would be particularly problematic.
This El Niño is likely to be even stronger than the current record event in 2015-16. That year caused the worst beach erosion in 150 years along the California coast, a USGS study found. San Francisco’s Ocean Beach narrowed by as much as 180 feet.
Amaya, who went to school at UC San Diego, said students use a local landmark to track El Niño.
“There is a massive rock that is just north of the pier that is completely buried by sand during non-El Niño years,” he said. “During El Niño years, the wave energy is much higher. Sea levels are higher. And it erodes the beaches away and exposes the rock. It’s lovingly referred to as ‘Rock Niño’ so that we know that El Niño is happening whenever the beach is exposing that massive rock.”
Scientists have studied Kelvin waves for decades, but pseudo-real time observations were not available during previous El Niños. Now, technology has improved.
The wave will affect marine life. Mammals move around in search of fish in colder water; whales for example could seek colder water further from the coast, putting them at greater risk of being struck by ships.
While El Niño’s effects on the oceans are temporary, the impacts of human-caused global warming are not.
Sea levels along the U.S. West Coast are predicted to rise 4 to 8 inches in the next three decades due to human-caused warming, according to a federal interagency report.
Already, West Coast seas have risen 9 inches to 1 foot since the late 19th century. The upcoming Kelvin wave could double that amount.
“It’s almost the entire climate change anomaly in one go,” Amaya said.
Interesting, for Midway Sinking concerns. Get your cameras out I’d say.
This makes me very nervous. I was in Ecuador/Peru in 1998 for El Nino. Catastrophic effects throughout… (Fun fact: El Nino got its name from Spanish explorers who encountered the storm near Easter Island around Christmas time. Baby Jesus = El Nino (Jesus))
What specifically is being done to prepare the residents of Mission Beach?
I read the story about the Kelvin Wave and the fact our sea level has risen since the 19th century, so here is an historical touch point for the other readers. Between 1982 and 1996, I directed a field archaeology team on Naval Base San Diego (formerly Naval Submarine Support Facility) to investigate the ruins of an 18th century Spanish Army fort (1796-1835) on Ballast Point at the foot of Rosecrans Street. The civilian archaeology team discovered the architectural ruins of the walls of the Spanish fort, which had been allowed to deteriorate during the Mexican era (1822-1835) and then was damaged by civilian plundering of the wall tiles to build houses in Old Town (eg. Machado-Silvas Adobe) in the 1830s and further damaged by a civilian whale-hunting operation and United States Army construction of a supply warehouse during World War 1. But here is the directly relevant point of my tale, for in 1989, the United States Navy issued me a permit to excavate a 3 meter deep pit to look for the ruins of the Spanish Army barracks behind the 18th century walls. At 2.5 meters down, the excavation flooded and sea water rose a half meter in an hour. Navy engineers authorized us to bring in several pumps and shoring material, which then secured the lumber shoring and enabled the sea water to be pumped up and out to the South side of Ballast Point. Although sea water rushed in like a sinking ship, my crew were able to excavate to expose a thick layer of gray clay that had formed an anaerobic (oxygenless) layer that perfectly preserved leather clothing parts, buttons, cut bone, seeds, plant remains, egg shells, firing caps, brass scraps, and a piece of a 1835 Majolica plate. The discovery made all the local news media and for a brielf point in time, my personal fame locally among academics, history organizations, United States Navy, 11th Naval District, United States Congress and the Spanish Ambassador and Consulate. Ah, but again back to my point of this tale…. the ocean level had risen at least 30 centimeters (aka 12-inches) since 1796 construction.