In Southern California, the growing risk of landslides has put many communities on edge, demonstrated by radar data from NASA focused on the Palos Verdes Peninsula in Los Angeles County.
The peninsula, which sits south of Los Angeles and juts out into the Pacific Ocean, contains an ancient landslide complex that has been active for the past six decades. However, exacerbated by intensifying bursts of rainfall due to climate change, the gradual movement of the landslides has drastically accelerated in recent years.
Surveying the Palos Verdes Landslides
The Advanced Rapid Imaging and Analysis (ARIA) team, featuring collaboration between NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Caltech, has been eyeing the progress of the Palos Verdes landslides, recently reporting heightened activity that occurred during the fall of 2024.
Radar imagery from ARIA revealed that during a four-week period (September 18, 2024 to October 17, 2024), land in the residential area of the peninsula slid toward the ocean by as much as 4 inches (10 centimeters) per week. The data was captured from four flights of NASA’s Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR), a radar instrument mounted to an aircraft that flies over areas to measure Earth deformation…