A federal geologist predicted that global sea rise could cause devastating destruction on Point Dume, swamp Pacific Coast Highway and overrun Malibu beaches with surges comparable to what the world saw this week in Florida.
The latest consensus is that ocean levels will increase 40 to 66 inches in the Santa Monica Bay over the next 82 years, said Juliette Finze Hart, a USGS scientist speaking at Monday’s city council meeting.
And when a serious storm arrives with the higher levels anticipated in the year 2100, an estimated 1,916 buildings — most of them houses — would be underwater in Malibu.
The problem, she said, will be storm surges on top of higher ocean levels, and “we unfortunately have a very powerful image of this right now on the East Coast of the U.S.”
Finze Hart showed a picture of Pacific Coast Highway, nearly falling into the sea last year near Coastline Drive, to illustrate her point.
The worst-case scenario shows the cliffs of Point Dume eroding back to consume the first row of ocean view houses, over the next 80 years.
The USGS scientist said the amount of sea level rise would depend on what the world does about levels of greenhouse gases. An increase of between 40 to 66 inches is possible, putting large section of Pacific Coast Highway under water at high tide.
“The area that’s impacted is about 13.6 miles of roadway” in Malibu, she said. “If you throw a one hundred year storm on top of that, it doubles.”
A 100-year storm is defined as a severe storm, with a one in 100 chance of happening any particular year.
Even without the storm, the USGS scientist had a dismal prediction for Malibu’s beaches. They will erode “an average of about 150 feet per beach, and in Southern California, 31 to 67 percent of the beaches are expected to erode by 2100,” Finze Hart told the city council.