Science Source
Physically based assessment of hurricane surge threat under climate change
- States that storm surges are responsible for much of the damage and loss of life associated with landfalling hurricanes
- As general circulation models (GCMs) cannot simulate hurricane surges directly, this study couples a GCM-driven hurricane model with hydrodynamic models to simulate large numbers of synthetic surge events under projected climates and assess surge threat, as an example, for New York City (NYC)
- States that New York City—struck by many intense hurricanes in recorded history and prehistory—is highly vulnerable to storm surges
- Shows that the change of storm climatology will probably increase the surge risk for NYC
- Results based on two GCMs show the distribution of surge levels shifting to higher values by a magnitude comparable to the projected sea-level rise (SLR)
- Concludes that the combined effects of storm climatology change and a 1 m SLR may cause the present NYC 100-yr surge flooding to occur every 3–20 yr and the present 500-yr flooding to occur every 25–240 yr by the end of the century
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