Beaches are still recovering from storm battering

MANY South West beaches are still not fully recovered from the battering they received five years ago.

The winter of 2013-14 saw a series of some of the most energetic series of storms yet to hit Europe’s Atlantic coastline.

Now new research involving the University of Plymouth shows that many beaches in Devon and Cornwall are back to only about 75% of their previous states.

Much of the sand and gravel stripped from the beaches was taken offshore and remains below the low tide level.

Eroded dunes have seen hardly any recovery and steep sides, known as “erosion scarps”, are still common on practically all the beaches.

The coastline will need several more calm winters before it recovers fully, say scientists in a study.

But beaches on the south coast have fared better because the 2013-14 storms pushed sand along the coast rather than offshore.

The Beast from the East early this year returned some of the sand to beaches such as Torcross in South Devon.

This caused ‘beach rotation’ within bays, meaning material eroded five years ago has been largely replenished during the series of opposing easterly storms which hit the UK in early 2018.

The research was led by the French National Centre for Sci- entific Research (CNRS), and also included scientists from Plymouth, the University of Western Brittany, the University of Bordeaux and Ulster University.

It builds on previous studies by the same scientists which have shown the winter storms of 2013-14 were the most energetic to hit the Atlantic coast of western Europe since records began in 1948. And they demonstrated that the pressure gradient along the Atlantic coast of Europe has intensified over the last 60 years, resulting in a significant upward trend in the winter wave conditions.

Dr Tim Scott, lecturer in ocean exploration, said: “We have come to realise that the Atlantic coast is very vulnerable to extreme storms and there is a real possibility that the

The A379 at Slapton after the Valentine’s Day storm of 2014

A comparison of Torcross beach in 2015 (left) and in 2018 shows some of the sand has returned storminess will increase due to climate change.

“Having a coastline with lots of sediment on the beaches and in the dunes reduces this vulnerability, but if stormy winters become more frequent there may not be sufficient time for beaches to recover fully, and then we may have a problem.

“Natural resilience can be enhanced through human inter- vention, in the form of beach recharge or nourishment, and it may be that we see an increase in such ‘building with nature’ in the future to safeguard our coastlines.”