New York City May Risk Future Flooding as Climate Change Worsens

New York City may face future flood risks as climate change continues. Scientists have found that as sea levels rise and as storms worsen, the city may be in for some rising waters during hurricanes.

"We wanted to look at the impact of climate change on sea level and storm characteristics to see how that has affected the storm surge on the Atlantic coast, specifically in New York City," said Andra Reed, one of the researchers, in a news release. "Hurricane Sandy was the motivating factor."

During Hurricane Sandy during 2012, most of New York City's transportation tunnels flooded, and the storm surge breached the sea walls of the southern tip of Manhattan Island at Battery Park, flooding subway tunnels. The high storm surge, in particular was the result of rising sea level, high tide and the storm's force.

In order to get a better sense of levels of storm surge before human induced climate change, they made use of proxy sea level records of sediments and foraminifera, which are tiny ocean organisms.  The researchers then simulated tropical cyclone histories spanning the past 1,000 years based on driving a model of tropical cyclone behavior with long-term climate model simulations.

"In the pre-anthropogenic era, the return period for a storm producing a surge of 2.81 meters (9 feet) or greater like Sandy at the Battery would have been about 3,000 years," said Reed. "We found that, in the anthropogenic era, the return period for this same storm surge height has been reduced to about 130 years."

Sea levels are rising due to climate change. In addition, climate change is leading to larger and more intense tropical storms. This means that there's a higher likelihood for flooding in regions like New York City. This, in turn, may mean that preparations should be made for higher waters in the future.

The findings are published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Related Stories

Climate Change May Negatively Impact Birth Weight with Hotter Days

Climate Change: King Crabs May Threaten Antarctic Ecosystem as Predators

For more great science stories and general news, please visit our sister site, Headlines and Global News (HNGN).