Project title: Coastal erosion in the Bay of Santander

Team: Castroverde D

C. Tetuán, 47   Santander   Spain   4 Student’s age: 14-15 years old

Is Santander’s coastline eroding due to global warming?
¿Se está erosionando la costa de Santander debido al calentamiento global?

This project consists of analysing the waves on the coast of Santander over 65 years (1958-2022), in order to observe how global warming has affected coastal erosion. To do this, we are going to analyse the size of the waves and storms.
We carried out this study because our city, Santander, is a coastal city, and we have observed that there is more erosion in coastal areas.
We think it could be due to global warming. To check this we are going to analyse the size of the waves, using a buoy located on the coast of our city, which will collect the data (size of the waves), which we will then analyse.
We started this work the week of the 24th of April and worked on it until the 3rd of May. First, we obtained the necessary data from the harbour’s website, obtained with a buoy, which was located between Somo and the Magdalena Peninsula.

We analyse the results obtained in winter.
The most representative month and the one on which we carried out the study is January. We can see that there is an irregular graph with many peaks. The lowest recorded figure is 1.82 m (1987), and the highest is 7.62 m (2012). This difference in wave size is due to storms. Global warming is affecting the number of storms.
As for the results obtained in spring, we analysed the month of April and observed that the number of storms has increased compared to the winter. Waves reached up to 4.38 metres (1989), while the minimum value recorded was 1.24 metres (2011).
When looking at the summer, we chose July.
We note that there have been hardly any storms. The size of the waves is below average most of the time. In the table, the lowest recorded figure was 0.72 metres in 1976, and the maximum value was in 1961, with a height of 3.35 metres.
Finally, in autumn, we looked at the month of October.
The storms begin to increase little by little, and except in the event of a storm, the swell is below average. When analysing the data, we have seen that the highest recorded figure was 5.85m in 1959, and the lowest was 1.32m in 2016.
We have come to the following conclusion:
We believe our hypothesis is correct. Over the years, storms have progressively increased, and our coastline is eroding.

Global warming is affecting coastal erosion, and increasing storm surges. In order to reduce this, we can collect signatures to come to a healthier and more sustainable agreement, such as instead of generating electricity through fossil fuels, use wind energy, hydro energy etc. Also, avoid excessive deforestation.
On the other hand, we can avoid travelling by plane, which is the transport that generates the most greenhouse gas emissions, or by private car, but instead we can use public transport such as the train.
Another thing we can do is to minimise online shopping.
We can also disseminate the work, so that more people know about the problem, and help us to change it.

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This project was automatically translated into English.
Projects are created by the teams and they take the full responsibility of the shared data.
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