{"id":8142,"date":"2012-11-15T15:34:45","date_gmt":"2012-11-15T20:34:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/?p=8142"},"modified":"2012-11-15T15:34:45","modified_gmt":"2012-11-15T20:34:45","slug":"putting-hurricane-sandy-into-context","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/2012\/11\/15\/putting-hurricane-sandy-into-context\/","title":{"rendered":"Putting Hurricane Sandy into context"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Nadine Lymn, ESA director of public affairs<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em>As the reports began coming in about the approaching \u201csuperstorm\u201d known as Hurricane Sandy, the chatter about how and if it was connected to global warming was not far behind.\u00a0 Indeed, it seemed that in the days following its devastating coastal landfall, attention on climate change was revived.<\/p>\n

In his Bloomberg view editorial, the New York mayor wrote that \u201cOur climate is changing. And while the increase in extreme weather we have experienced in New York City<\/a> and around the world may or may not be the result of it, the risk that it might be \u2014 given this week\u2019s devastation \u2014 should compel all elected leaders to take immediate action.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Discovery News, Larry O\u2019Hanlon didn\u2019t mince words<\/a>: \u201cDid climate change cause Hurricane Sandy? Absolutely not. Did climate change have anything to do with Sandy being as bad as it was? Absolutely so, say scientist bloggers whose bread and butter is understanding the physics of our atmosphere.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over at Climate Central, Andrew Freedman wrote an illuminating piece<\/a> on Hurricane Sandy noting that \u201cIf this were a criminal case, detectives would be treating global warming as a likely accomplice in the crime.\u201d In his article, Freedman noted that the most damaging aspect of the hurricane was the storm surge.<\/p>\n

A US Geological Survey study<\/a> published in Nature Climate Change this past summer focused on the risks that rising sea levels pose to the US Atlantic coast, including major cities such as New York, Boston, Baltimore and Norfolk.\u00a0 The study found that sea level is rising up to four times faster than the global average along the 1,000 kilometer (620 mile) coastline stretching from north of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina up to north of Boston, Massachusetts.\u00a0 The USGS researchers found that since about 1990, sea level along this so-called \u201chotspot\u201d of coastline has risen by two to 3.7 millimeters per year, compared with a global rise of between 0.6 and one millimeter per year over the same time period.<\/p>\n

In a USGS press release<\/a> about the study, Asbury (Abby) Sallenger, USGS oceanographer and project lead said that \u201cOngoing accelerated sea level rise in the hotspot will make coastal cities and surrounding areas increasingly vulnerable to flooding by adding to the height that storm surge and breaking waves reach on the coast.\u201d<\/p>\n

The NASA images below show the shoreline of Mantoloking, New Jersey before and after Hurricane Sandy.<\/p>\n

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A 2009 US Global Change Research report<\/a> included a focus on the nation\u2019s coastal areas and addressed both sea level rise as well as warming sea surface temperatures and their potential to add to the strength of hurricanes:<\/p>\n

\u201cA warming climate will cause further sea-level rise over this century and beyond. Rising sea level is already eroding shorelines, drowning wetlands, and threatening homes, businesses, and infrastructure. The destructive potential of Atlantic hurricanes has increased in recent decades in association with increasing sea surface temperatures.\u201d<\/p>\n

The destruction wrought by Sandy underscores the vulnerability of our coastal areas, many of them heavily populated.<\/p>\n

To view USGS pre and post photos of Sandy\u2019s impact on the Atlantic coast, ranging from North Carolina to Massachusetts, click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Top photo: Hurricane Sandy off the East Coast on October 29, 2012, GOES satellite image, NASA<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Nadine Lymn, ESA director of public affairs As the reports began coming in about the approaching \u201csuperstorm\u201d known as Hurricane Sandy, the chatter about how and if it was connected to global warming was not far behind.\u00a0 Indeed, it seemed that in the days following its devastating coastal landfall, attention on climate change was revived. In his Bloomberg view…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1478,1111,60,61,459,1315,1371,474,813,279],"class_list":["post-8142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-research","tag-atlantic-ocean","tag-atmosphere","tag-climate-change","tag-coastal","tag-east-coast","tag-flooding","tag-global-change","tag-global-warming","tag-hurricane","tag-sea-levels"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/41"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8142\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}