Peer Reviewed Research Predicted NYC Subway Flooding by Sandy

NO!!!! Global warming is a myth! You cannot predict anything with statistics! Only wizards and investment bankers can make predictions that come true. We are completely at the mercy of a planet we cannot alter. Stop giving us data we refuse to accept. Remember, America has already burned witches.

Image from here.

Last year's hurricane Irene was a warning that went largely unheeded, as expected. There have been countless warnings and more recently, evidence, that sea levels are rising and will continue to rise, with dire results for coastal cities everywhere. There have been repeated warnings of stronger hurricanes and more of them, due to Earth's slowly but inexorably increasing temperature. We're beginning to see them. As for the warnings? Unheeded, as expected. Instead, they became fodder for a game of political football.

Hurricane Sandy is only a foretaste of what's to come. Just the appetizer at a very large meal. There will be fiercer storms and more of them, guaranteed. Earth's extra heat has to go somewhere, and this is one way Nature uses to dump it.

Next week? Hurricane Sandy, forgotten by all save those who've lost their homes, their jobs and their loved ones. Complacency marches on, its head ever buried more firmly in the sand.

What will it take?

Regardless of what happens with the statistical rate and intensity of storms (which is still all that modelling can predict -- not even commenting on the validity of the models which is a whole different conversation), populations/cultures do not change their habits unless events happen fast enough that that the next event comes before the clean up from the previous event is over. In the US, we have farmers and cities in flood plains, we have coastal cities below sea level (New Orleans), we have "tornado alleys". People insist on building major cities on top of multiple unstable fault lines (San Andreas fault system plus its nearby sisters). In other places, you have people returning to homes on the slopes of active volcanoes. Even toxic waste dumps are cleaned up and re-purposed to reclaim space.

Populations will live wherever they can build. Even governments won't, they can't, forbid building in unstable/dangerous areas because land area is irreplaceable (not allowing for sea level change here). The most they can do is "national parks" and changing building codes. Even then, unless you have a completely authoritarian system, the process of changing building codes takes time -- the article said the study came out just a year ago, you expect bureaucracies to move faster than 3 years? And spend all the money needed to upgrade a citywide 100 year old system? Remember what happened when US passed the stimulus bill in 2012? "shovel-ready" anyone?

As if this were the first study? Do you think that they suddenly woke one morning and said, "Gee! We never realised the danger until just now! We'd better do a study!"

Bollocks.

didn't say it was the first -- the article was talking about a specific study. However, as we are talking about a bureaucracy or a legislature, you do have to account for the "not my problem", "we can't plan on the basis of once in 500 year events", and "not studied by our people/administration" crowds. Also, I wouldn't be too sure about the idea of storm surge specifically having been studied too much in reference to subway systems -- 1) how many cities have them or anything comparable? 2) sea level rise HAS been studied, but the idea still needs to percolate from academia to politicians and 3) even if the idea HAS gotten into the planning stages of infrastructure proposals, the kind of undertaking needed to secure such a system is, shall we say, significant? The kind of cost and level of activity would raise allot of comment; have you heard of any? Again, this sub-thread isn't talking about logic here, but about the reactions (speed and extent) of public policy planners and politicians responding in today's political and economic climate.

What utter garbage. This was a 'perfect' storm in the sense the winds were coming from just the right direction and had absolutely NOTHING to do with the sea level rise of a few inches over the last sixty years. You take away four inches and the subways still flooded. Grrrrrrrrr.

Between 1950 and 1960, six hurricanes stronger than this one hit the east coast. All caused extensive damage. Now we have more people living even closer to the water. Many jurisdictions allowed this growth where it should not be allowed. We apparently don't learn from history. I have a really hard time with local governments that allow growth in places where it is only a matter of time before damage happens. Allowing housing in known flood plains is one of them. Where I live now, we have had three hundred year floods in 16 years. many homes are still being built in these flood plain areas. Makes me want to scream "stupidity"

We now have similar ocean current/temp conditions to those in the early 50s. Any bets on a few more of these storms in the next few years? A meteorologist(sp? weatherman) in Seattle posted something about this a few weeks ago so I can't quote his exact words about the conditions. He said something about duadunal flows being identical to the early 50s. Not sure of the spellings.

I was reading some of the historical stats on hurricanes making landfall in specific places in the northeast this afternoon. It's interesting to look back over a couple of centuries and see that there were 'clusters' with a lot of hurricanes over years or decades and also long stretches with few or no major impacts.

There were only four Category 1 landfalls on the record (in several hundred years) for New Jersey. Two of them: Irene and Sandy,2011, 2012.

Here in NL there have been 13 hurricane force landfalls on the record (starting 1775). Half of those have happened since 1995. One third have happened in the last 3 years. Yep, 4 in the last 3 years, although the last 2 dropped to tropical storm status shortly before landfall.

It's directly related to water temperature in our case, since colder water takes the mickey out of em before they get this far north - we have some tropical storm/remnants here every year, but category 1 landfalls have been pretty rare until recently. Warm times.

For what it's worth, paleotempestology () tells us there have been periods of greater storm frequency and intensity in the more distant past.