PLEA Network

19 March 2016, Climate News Network, Western Europe coasts face a pounding. Extreme weather caused by global warming could lead to more violent and more frequent storms devastating beaches on exposed Atlantic coastlines in Europe.  The Atlantic seas could be getting rougher, with winter storms capable of causing dramatic changes to the beaches of Western Europe. And new research shows that the pounding delivered to the shorelines of the UK and France in the winter of 2013-2014 was the most violent since 1948. Gerd Masselink, professor of coastal geomorphology at Plymouth University School of Marine Science and Engineering, UK, and colleagues report in Geophysical Research Letters that they decided to switch focus from sea level rise resulting from global warming. Instead, they concentrated on the energy delivered by the rising waves as they crashed onto the beaches, dunes, shingle beds and rocky coasts, and on the consequent erosion of sediment. Rising levels For decades, climate scientists have predicted that rising levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases from the human combustion of fossil fuel could lead to global warming, and that warming would be accompanied by more frequent or more violent storms. That sea level rise inexorably means damage to coastlines has been repeatedly confirmed. And the fact that Atlantic waves have been getting higher was settled long ago. A study in 1991 revealed that wave heights − measured from a lightship and an ocean weather station − had been rising by 2% a year since 1950. ” “It should undoubtedly be considered in future coastal and sea defence planning along the Atlantic coast of Europe” The latest study examined open-coast sites across Scotland, Ireland, England, France, Portugal, Spain and Morocco. The researchers found that, along exposed coastlines in France and England, the beaches had taken a hammering. For every one metre strip of beach, there had been sand and shingle losses of up to 200 cubic metres. Read more here