A new study says that due to climate change, major flooding is likely to take place in New York City every 25 years rather than every 500 years.
Published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study found that flood level heights rose about four feet between the years 850 and 2005, primarily because of sea-level rise caused by melting ice glaciers and ice sheets and warmer water temperatures. "Sea level is rising because of climate change," one of the study's scientists, meteorologist Michael Mann, told USA Today. "But climate change also appears to be leading to larger and more intense tropical storms."
When Hurricane Sandy hit Manhattan on Oct. 30, 2012, tunnels were flooded and the storm surge — caused by the rising sea level, high tide, and the force of the storm — breached sea walls on the southern tip of the island. The report was timed to coincide with the storm's third anniversary, and Adam Sobel, a Columbia University atmospheric scientist who was not part of the study, says it adds "certainty to what we already know, which is that coastal cities around the world — including New York, but we're not the only one, nor the worst — are in trouble."
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