One of them is the 2025 San Diego County Beach Report by Scripps.
“The Beach Report is something we produce every year for San Diego,” said William O’Reilly of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. “We reported that our beaches have widened since last year, which is what we were expecting after El Niño.”
The report surveyed nine of our beaches in San Diego County, from Ocean Shores to the border.
“We have a cycle of beach loss during the El Niño winter and then a slow progressive recovery over the next few 3-4 years before the next El Niño,” O’Reilly said. “So we’re in that phase, and the beaches are a little wider than last year. So it’s good.”
Widening of the beach basically means that there is more sand on the shoreline and the opposite will happen if it is narrowing.
Beaches are measured using satellite and laser imaging technology.
“It measures the beach in great detail down to the water line. So we have this amazing data set that shows how our beaches evolve week to week and year to year,” O’Reilly said.
Another recent study from Scripps shows that the state’s average beach width has remained stable. According to O’Reilly, some beaches have been getting narrower over the past 20 to 25 years.
“But what we didn’t realize was that actually the second half of the beaches were becoming wider than the first because sand moved up and down the coast rather than leaving the system entirely,” O’Reilly said.
While it’s great that local beaches have widened from last year to this year due to the recovery from El Nino, that doesn’t mean we’re still out of the woods when it comes to shorelines and shorelines.
The researchers said there are still concerns about the long-term effects of erosion and rising sea levels on beaches.
“Right now, beach width appears to be fairly stable, but over time, we expect to see more vulnerability in terms of beaches along the coast here,” said Mark Merrifield of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
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