SUPERSTORM: Post-tropical cyclone's massive extent, seen here from space, generated a devastating storm surge that inundated New Jersey, New York and Connecticut.
Image: NASA
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GOWANUS, BROOKLYN—Superstorm Sandy's surge halted a little more than a block from my home, mirroring almost precisely the border of two different nearby flood zones on New York City's evacuation map. Homes, stores and warehouses closer to the Gowanus Canal at the westernmost end of Long Island—one of the most polluted sites in the U.S. as a result of an industrial legacy paired with sewage overflows in heavy rains, qualifying its bottom muck, waters and adjacent land for Superfund designation—saw basements and lower floors turned into stinking pools. The foul waters remained trapped by sandbags and other would-be antiflood precautions even the day after.
Throughout the New York metropolitan region and farther south in New Jersey, Sandy's hurricane-force winds brought down trees and power lines, causing an estimated $20 billion or more in damage. But the more than 74-mile-per-hour winds’ most enduring impact may have been from the massive swell of water they pushed atop land, obliterating beaches, drowning boardwalks, filling subway tunnels, destroying electrical infrastructure and wrecking lives.
Although it may be hard to believe, the event could have been even more damaging. "This was not the worst case," says storm surge specialist Jamie Rhome of the National Hurricane Center (NHC) at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "A worst case would have been a stronger storm with the exact same track" that also came ashore at the same time as high tide. "That would have produced even more flooding," he adds.
Yet, Superstorm Sandy's massive flooding is already unprecedented in recent decades. According to experts, however, it is only going to become more likely in coming decades, thanks to a combination of local geography, vulnerable coastal development and already-happening sea-level rise as a result of climate change. In the future, it will not take a frankenstorm like Sandy to inundate the region. Given that reality, the best defense may be to accept the inevitability of flooding and prepare infrastructure to withstand it, as is common in other regions more historically prone to storm surge flooding.
Not the first flood
The New York metropolitan area has, of course, suffered damaging storm surges throughout its history, although most were not as severe. For example, in 1960 Hurricane Donna stormed up the entire Eastern seaboard as a Category 2 tropical cyclone, boasting winds above 105 mph. Even though Donna had mitigating factors—it arrived at low tide and that storm (like last year’s Category 1 Hurricane Irene) traveled parallel to the coast rather than striking it head on—those winds pushed enough seawater into New York Harbor to cause a storm surge of more than six feet that similarly inundated parts of Manhattan.
In contrast, Sandy's larger surge is a result of the post-tropical cyclone's track, which saw the superstorm turn in to and then smash the coast of New Jersey, pushing a punishing wall of water in front of it into the Garden State’s coast as well as north into New York Harbor.
How do winds create a storm surge? In a tropical cyclone, air pressure is highest at the edges and low at the center. The air flows, at speeds above 74 mph, to fill that low-pressure area. In addition, the low pressure itself helps raise the sea's level beneath it, heightening the surge where the center of the storm makes landfall. Wave action itself can also enhance the effect, adding even more height to a storm surge as the waves pile into shore one on top of the next.
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17 Comments
Add CommentThe best part of having wetlands, forest, dunes, and barrier islands as buffers is they become homes to wildlife and give urbanites an area where they can relax and enjoy wild places when the weather is good.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI expect that New Jersey's boardwalks will be rebuilt but there's no better time than this to build the buffers that will help people weather the coming storm of Climate Change. The wild areas of Louisiana are so impressive that a visit there is like going back in time.
Building, or rebuilding oyster reefs, will be a good thing as well in spite of the pollution which will prevent people from using the resource for food. New York City is going to need hard defenses but the coast has had barrier islands in the past. Homes should be prohibited but camping, day use areas and marshes would improve NYC life immensely. All options for a buffer zone need to be considered, although property rights will most likely be a sticking point it will not get better to engineer change than now.
it is really sad news, and my thoughts and prayer gose to to people of sandy,New Jersy and New York. It seems natural disaster occuring more frequently than ever. i think the flooding happened in Sandy, is caused by wind and plate shift. Hopefully they all recover from this disaster and return to their normal life.
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Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe time is not for 'going back to normal'. This new freak storm (storms of which I have often spoken about here) should be a wake up call. Warming is here, it is not geting better, the tipping point was the Artic thaw and the methane being outgassed from the shallow sea floors, which has already doubled sum GHG emissions.
The longer it takes for action to address the unavoidable changes that must be made, as amply described by conservationists, it will simply make things worse. We must Clean Our Act Up – but not for fear. We must clean up for logic, for good sense, because it's the right thing to do, because the post-oil transition would only have to be done at a later date anyhow inevitably, while if we shift now there are still some reserves, we may leave a bit for posterity, regardless of warming, as a safeguard.
An extensive public geothermal program across most of the western US, as proposed by the MIT, would be the single largest step in this shift. Even a conservative could see the beauty of ceasing to regularly pay vast sums to one’s sworn enemies, and reaching self-sufficiency in energy.
http://geothermal.inel.gov/publications/future_of_geothermal_energy.pdf
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/geothermal/pdfs/evaluation_egs_tech_2008.pdf
Wind + solar + sea (as a portfolio), and deep geothermal (very stable, great jobs), complemented by nuclear thorium (far more abundant than uranium, almost no proliferation issues, great for mini-plants the size of a house) and the myriad gizmos that are sure to be invented, while nuclear fusion is perfected… WILL do the job.
It gives deep understanding of Science behind Sandy's Hurricane.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDr.A.Jagadeesh Nellore(AP),India
E-mail: anmakonda.jagadeesh@gmail.com
julianpenrod's rants should be archived as reference material for the next article on the topic of paranoia.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSuch an all-powerful conspiracy let's you post the 'truth' here for all to see? Convenient, isn't it?
Somebody thought access to the Internet might be therapeutic...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMaybe...I seem to have been deleted, but that not as important as the fact that they deleted the penrod, too! Think of how valuable the penrod's lunatic commentary could be for psychologists! Think of the loss to science! ;)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThough dealing with climate change is essential in the long run, places like New York and new Jersey need to find quicker, more local solutions to protect themselves from big storms and storm surges (and also, potentially, tsunamis). It seems like all the barrier systems proposed, whether "natural" (barrier islands, dunes, wetlands, and forests) or "artificial" (sea walls, tidal barriers, etc.) are both expensive and disruptive. I wonder why no one has proposed what seems to me like a simpler solution. Require new building to be built on raised land (or possibly sturdy pilings) so it is above the threat level. Unlike New Orleans, New York and New Jersey have access to nearby rocky hills and mountains which could be quarried to be used for fill. I don't know how the expense would compare. But fill has some great advantages. It does not require maintenance, and it can be done piecemeal, building by building, without having much impact on surrounding areas. If all the low structures were raised above the threat level, there would be no need for dikes or sea walls. (Port facilities and underground facilities would still need to be protected or engineered to survive flooding.) In addition to using fill to raise new construction above the threat level, maybe some low lying areas should be converted to parks and natural areas, and closed to development. The cities could buy back the land. Now would be the ideal time to do this, rather than rebuilding.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs well as tide and wave power as well as Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC).OTEC uses the temperature difference between cooler deep and warmer shallow or surface ocean waters to run a heat engine and produce useful work, usually in the form of electricity.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisStorms happen, our land use practices determine whether there is a disaster or not. Few remember Reagan's plan to buy back the sand dune and island areas of the northeast coast back in the 1980's. Had we done so this storm would have been more of a curiosity than a disaster.
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Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm from Russia.
Unfortunately, members of the government in our countries cannot be called intellectuals.
But, Your country often suffers from hurricanes.
I suggested the method of dealing with hurricanes, which is to make cyclones free from atmospheric precipitation in the ocean and not to make flood in the mainland.
At the same time - cost-no, but it turns out a lot of compressed and very cheap hydrogen.
Your rulers did not even deign to delve into the project.
I wait for the relevance will increase and when You regularly nature will make the world a flood in one single country.
Then, if I am alive - помогу. vetto@nm.ru
Do expect that such storms would surge in frequency and magnitude. carbon-oxygen dances at very intricate manner. Solution is not very simple - make oil/gas through carbon signaling technology and pump it back within 'empty' reservoirs where it has been 'sucked' out. Adapting to climate changes is not an option, reversing it would be if appropriately done by occupying work force in the right sense. Natural resources are constantly released by every human being and animal. Just let bacs work for us via the origin. If Nature have had locked energy stored in carbon matter, it has its purpose to serve Earth as a whole unity of interfering particles/strings/waves. We should learn from it, but abusing it. Life is not about money, life is about life's secrets. Energy is the potential difference of chained entangled interfering states. "God does NOT play dices" A.E.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy does the Facebook/Twitter window obscure the article's text. Is there a way to remove it?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe corrupt government should not allow people to build at less than 100ft above sea level.there is other uses for the land,such as agriculture and forrests.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think that stan e m has a point but perhaps we can put a sharper point on it. Instead of "big government" interfering, simply allow private insurance companies to scale their homeowner and property insurance fees according to the individual risk involved in a given property (just like auto insurance) and eliminate national flood insurance. Thus, those who choose to own structures in high risk areas will have to pay more, perhaps much more in premiums and the rest of us will not have to supplement their losses to the degree that we do now. Those who wish to build in an exceptionally high risk area might be denied insurance completely. Thus, the market place will ultimately decide where people build and what the price of repeated washouts will be for all of us.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMy guess is that within a few storm cycles, when people find that they must pay the entire cost of replacement entirely out of their own pockets, a lot fewer structures will be built below, say, 30 vertical feet above mean high tide.
Since the insurance companies will jack up the rates on everyone if unregulated, it would be better to fix the underlying problem of global warming.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this100 ft would cover sea level rise and tsunami
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