A list compiled by The Huffington Post says they are. Scientists back up the claim.
By Olivia Damavandi / Assistant Editor
Malibu has recently been listed as one of 12 cities whose homes are most threatened by the effects global warming. The list, “Precarious homes potentially subject to climate change,” released by The Huffington Post last week, includes homes in India, Los Angeles, Orange County, Italy, West Africa, Florida, Mexico, Texas and Puerto Rico that are located in areas highly prone to natural disasters.
While the effects of climate change have long been debated, many believe that increasing global temperatures will intensify natural disasters such as wildfires, mudslides, earthquakes and soil erosion, among others. As a result, these precariously positioned homes, whether on cliffs, along coasts or up canyons, will face heightened danger in the years ahead.
“Though it is very difficult to pin any particular storm or natural disaster on climate change, like Hurricane Katrina, the science is clear that one of the effects of climate change will be to increase the frequency and magnitude of hurricanes, snow storms, deadly heat waves, and other intense weather events, “ Cara Horowitz, executive director of the Emmett Center on Climate Change and the Environment at UCLA, said Monday in a phone interview. “Our ability to respond much more frequently to natural disasters that used to be once-in-a-century events will be strained and communities will suffer.”
The question for many, however, is when these changes will start taking place. Horowitz said they already have.
“In Southern California, we’re already beginning to see more intense and frequent wildfires,” she said. “We will also increasingly face water supply droughts due to the loss of the Sierra snowpack, which supplies so much of our water. Intense heat waves and rising temperatures will threaten our most vulnerable populations, the elderly and small children, and will exacerbate air pollution problems and asthma rates.
“Malibu will face all of these problems in the coming decades,” Horowitz continued. “Because it’s a coastal community, Malibu’s beachfront will also be harmed by sea level rise.”
The state has projected a rise of at least one to two feet by the end of this century, or even higher. “This will erode beaches and could threaten homes,” Horowitz said.
Such problems are already evident at Broad Beach, where severe erosion is currently undermining coastal homes and residents are preparing to spend $20 million on a plan to permanently restore the beach to its 100-foot width within the next six years. Contingent on the slope of the beach, every inch the sea level rises claims an average of 50 inches of land.
The narrowing trend of Broad Beach (and of many Southern California beaches) is being caused by a combination of recurring weather patterns and rising sea levels, according to Gary Griggs, a professor of earth and planetary science at UC Santa Cruz and director of the university’s Institute of Marine Sciences.
Griggs explained that beaches tend to lose sand and narrow during warmer phases of weather that produce more thunder storms, which California has been experiencing since 1978. Broad Beach started narrowing in the late ’70s, became exceedingly noticeable during the past four to six years and has worsened significantly during the last year or so, he said.
Despite California’s eroding beaches, Dr. Hartmut Aumann, a scientist studying climate change at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Canada Flintridge, said Malibu residents might not notice any drastic effects of global warming during their lifetime.
“Global warming has occurred at the rate of 0.2 degrees Fahrenheit per decade,” Aumann said Tuesday in a phone interview. “Some estimate things getting worse at 1 percent per decade. You’d have to live in Malibu for 100 years before you’d see significant change. Nobody lives there that long.?
Both Aumann and Horowitz advise owners of homes in hazardous areas to minimize the threat of a natural disaster by taking precautionary measures, like clearing dry brush and increasing insurance.
“But the most important communal activity to undertake, in my view, is a political one,” Horowitz said. “It’s not too late to take steps to stave off the worst climate change impacts, in Malibu and around the world.
“The best thing Malibu residents can do to protect their own neighborhoods and houses this year is to push for strong federal climate legislation,” she said. “This would put us on a path to avoid the worst of these harms.”