Climate Crisis Makes Storms Like the One That Just Flooded NYC up to 20% Wetter, Study Finds

It’s no secret that extreme weather is becoming more frequent due to climate change, bringing wetter and more damaging storms. The storm that brought a deluge of rainfall to New Jersey and New York on Sept. 29 was exceptionally moist, drenching New York City’s JFK airport in more than 7.87 inches of rain, breaking the record set in 1948, a press release from ClimaMeter said.

Now, an experimental rapid framework study by European scientists with ClimaMeter has concluded that storms of this type are 10 to 20 percent wetter compared to last century due to climate change.

“Human-driven climate change plays a dual role, both intensifying these storms and warming the atmosphere,” said Davide Faranda, leader of ClimaMeter and a climate physics researcher at the Institut Pierre-Simon Laplace in France, as reported by The Guardian. “Deeper storms yield more intense phenomena, while a warmer atmosphere can accommodate a greater amount of rain.”

These types of storms are caused by cold air masses coming down from Canada and converging with warm, humid air from the Gulf of Mexico, the press release said.

The storm on Sept. 29 flooded New York City subways, shops and restaurants, leaving people wading through water and abandoning their vehicles on highways.

A sea lion whose enclosure overflowed found temporary freedom in the floodwaters.

The weather anomalies that contributed to that particular storm were a northern high-pressure system and low-pressure off the North Carolina coast.

“With global temperature increases due to human-induced climate change, New York may face more frequent and severe heatwaves, heavy precipitation leading to urban flooding, elevated storm surge risks, and chronic flooding from sea-level rise. The extent of these impacts depends on factors such as the global warming, local geography, and regional climate patterns,” ClimaMeter reported.

According to a report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, heavy precipitation events are predicted to increase and be more frequent and intense everywhere in the U.S.

“New York is experiencing a very clear increase in these extreme – more than 2in per hour – rainfall events, and that’s clearly tied to a warming atmosphere,” said Michael Mann, a University of Pennsylvania climate scientist and author, as The Guardian reported.

Mann said that, while rapid attribution studies can sometimes overlook some extreme weather mechanisms, increased flood threat due to climate change is clear.

In order to deal with the rise in extreme weather events, city infrastructures will need to be updated and redesigned.

“It’s clear that our cities and our aging infrastructure were built for a climate that no longer exists, particularly as a warmed atmosphere holds and releases more water,” said Daniel Zarrilli, former New York City chief climate policy adviser, as reported by The Guardian. “This requires not only greater investment to deal with the new extremes, but also the creativity to think differently about design for when the capacity of our infrastructure is inevitably exceeded.”