NYC at greater risk of flooding because of climate change

A combination of climate-driven sea level rise and stronger tropical cyclones is putting New York City at risk for more and higher floods like those seen during Hurricane Sandy, a group of researchers has found.

The researchers recorded that the rise in the water indicates that the coastal area is now at the probability of being affected by floods every 25 years.

The researchers said that in a changing climate, future inundation of the United States’ Atlantic coast will depend on storm surges during tropical cyclones and the rising sea levels on which those surges occur. In reality, this time frame is too short to say if the risks to New York City’s coastal areas have significantly increased since before records started being taken, but the trends affecting the city line up with other trends in coastal regions around the world.

They recorded that the water level has risen four feet between the years 850 and 2005.

Data crunched indicates that Sandy-like flooding was a 1-in-3,000-year event, something that would not have been seen for generations at a time, said Reed.

This was a first-of-its-kind study. “Both factors – increased intensity and size – lead to larger storm surges”, said Mann. “But climate change also appears to be leading to larger and more intense tropical storms”. “With climate change, that becomes roughly a one-in-a-century event”, said Michael Mann, MIT expert and co-author of the study. “There’s a lot of swell in the water, looks like we’re going to have it for the rest of the week”, said Eric Plyer of Ocean City.

A team of scientists suggest that the risk of New York City flooding has raised dramatically during the industrial era as a result of human-caused climate change.

Researchers, writing in the journal PNAS, evaluated sediment at different points along the shore in New Jersey to compare sea levels between 1970 and 2005 and sea levels between 850 and 1800. While most homeowners listen to hear the category of the hurricane, in the case of Sandy, it was the overall size of the storm that caused the surge.

Hurricane Sandy flooded numerous traffic and subway tunnels and even breached sea walls on the south tip of Manhattan.

“I have learned the hard way”, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said, “that it is better to prepare for the worst”.

But they have found that in the anthropogenic era, the return period for this same storm surge height has been reduced to about 130 years. When climate studies refer to the sea level rising by less than a meter in a few places, it really doesn’t seem like that big of a problem.

“The study is the preamble for what we have to be concerned about”, said Klaus Jacob, special research scientist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, who was not involved in the research.

Reed, A. J., et al.