In fact, Sandy's sprawling wind field is still pushing water above normal levels, even days after the center of the storm made landfall.
The cost of creating better protection
Low-lying New York City, with all of its coastal development, is particularly vulnerable to those higher waters. In areas such as the Gulf Coast and eastern Florida that see more hurricane activity, flood walls, levees and even engineered wetlands help lessen storm impacts. There are proposals, for instance, to extend a dike around Galveston, Tex., to protect it from storms similar in magnitude to 2008's Hurricane Ike.
To fully protect Manhattan would require a flood wall that is tall, long and continuous, wrapping around the island on both sides, similar to the 16-kilometer-long, five-meter-high and nearly five-meter-thick (at its base) sea wall along the Galveston shorefront. In the aftermath of Hurricane Donna in 1960, such a sea wall actually was proposed for Coney Island—but never built.
That is not to say such a wall would be a cure-all. Even if such a defense were built, the wall could also function to keep water in as well as out during severe flooding, much as happened in Galveston after Hurricane Ike. Such an approach isn’t always popular for other reasons as well: it blocks ocean views. "You also have an aesthetic issue," notes geomorphologist Chris Houser of Texas A&M University.
In theory, nature’s protections—wetlands, forests and barrier islands—could blunt storm impacts. "It's like a sea wall but it's made of sand," Houser says of barrier islands and their dunes, his primary area of research. The way that such barrier islands jut out—their convex shape—acts as a break to storm surges, compared to the funneling effect of concave-shaped bays and inlets, such as those in New York Harbor. But there isn’t sufficient available real estate around New York City to restore natural defenses such as wetlands or forests.
Blocking the effects of future superstorms will require bigger-than-natural barrier islands, in any case. In Louisiana, for example, manmade barriers will be three times higher than naturally occurring islands to shield coastal property and oil and gas infrastructure. A similarly outsized manmade barrier island would need to be raised in New York Harbor.
That leaves possibly too-expensive alternatives, such as tidal barriers like the one in the Thames River to protect London or a massive system of levees, dikes and other water control structures, such as those in the Netherlands. But the Thames Barrier cost nearly $2 billion to build and some $10 million per year to operate. That kind of tidal barrier has been a dream of some New York City planners for at least a century, or more.
Adapting to climate change
As if all that weren’t enough to manage, there's the additional trial of coping with sea-level rise. Two major factors are at work in New York City. First, land rebounding farther north after the removal of the massive weight of Ice Age glaciers has caused the island of Manhattan itself to slowly sink. Second, at the same time, the oceans have risen by nearly three inches locally over the course of the 20th century, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. These changes will make creating long-lasting protection from storm surges even more challenging. "You're starting from a new zero," Rhome says. "The exact same storm is going to produce an even worse storm surge in a future time."
Rights & Permissions
See what we're tweeting about
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.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this
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.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this
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
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this