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A youtube video explaining the damage done

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A youtube video explaining the damage done

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Les New Yorkais évacuent les logements inondés

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Sewers can also become overtaxed during intense rain events when the sheer volume of stormwater and wastewater entering the system fills them to capacity, leaving no space for excess water to enter. In this condition, described as a sewer being surcharged, the excess stormwater remains above ground.

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-clean your nearest catch basin
-conserve water
-treat the waste water system with care
-become a green gardener
- the city's climate change program

- les portes maritimes et les barrières de protection
-infrastructure à niveau
-atténuateurs d'ondes
- huîtres et sable
-Différents modèles de développement

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Causes uneasy transportation

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Boats and boating--Equipment and supplies

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Flash Floods Cause Severe Damage In Upstate NY

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° New York City was not built to withstand an onslaught of floodwater.

° The aging sewer system handles both storm water and waste and is easily overwhelmed

° . “New York City is vulnerable to storm surge because of its special location at the junction of the New Jersey coast and Long Island,” says Ning Lin

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Like most American cities that border an ocean, New York City is at risk for flooding due to sea-level rise.

Sea-level rise not only threatens city infrastructure and the livelihoods of New Yorkers. It also poses a huge economic threat to the city's five boroughs, according to Daniel Zarrilli, the city's Chief Resilience Officer.

"There's coastal real estate at risk, consequences to job creation, and the natural impact of climate on the lowest income residents in New York City and around the globe. People might have to move or migrate," he told Business Insider. "It's pretty profound when you think about the types of economic impacts we'll see from that. And it will be disruptive."

The most recent reminder to New Yorkers about the risks of flooding was Hurricane Sandy, which killed at least 147 people in the Northeastern United States, Canada, and the Caribbean in 2012. In New York City, the storm, which had a cyclone over a thousand miles in diameter, caused water to rush over Staten Island, the Rockaways, and downtown Manhattan near Wall Street.

The water flooded several subway lines, many of which are still undergoing repairs. Since many buildings lost power, the city lost at least $25 billion in estimated business activity, too. The storm also damaged thousands of homes and an estimated 250,000 vehicles.

Even after the region spent $61 billion on Sandy-relief efforts, New York City's housing, subways, and roads are still vulnerable to rising seas and other effects of climate change. (Recent research has linked global warming to Hurricane Sandy and other extreme weather events.)

By 2050, NYC's average temperature is expected to rise between 4.1 and 6.6°F, and annual precipitation is expected to increase between 4% and 13%, which could exacerbate sea-level rise. Dangerous waves are now 20 times more likely to overwhelm the Manhattan seawall than they were 170 years ago, according to a recent study.

A child born today could see the waters surrounding Manhattan rise up to six feet higher in Manhattan in their lifetime, according to a 2015 report.

In the New York metropolitan area alone, there are 48 major transit facilities at 10 feet or less above sea level. All of the city's four airports also are at risk of flooding. Depending on its strength, a future storm could singlehandedly cost the East Coast region between $1.13 billion and $283 billion, according to a report from the University of Maryland.

Below is what New York City's floodplain could look like in the 2020s. The blue and green shading indicates areas that are dry today:

And here it is in 2100:

Even though scientists have spent the past several decades studying the risks of climate change, there is skepticism within the federal government. In June, President Donald Trump announced that the US will exit the Paris Agreement, which aims to mitigate rising temperatures and sea levels on a global scale. On August 15, he also signed an executive order that will roll back building standards for government-funded infrastructure projects in flood-prone areas.

In response to the risks, New York City is working on implementing a climate resiliency plan, which was unveiled in 2013. Zarrilli said the plan includes strategies like building a $335 million floodwall in lower Manhattan, revising building codes, and installing bioswales that channel excess water to contained green areas.

"The risks of climate change aren't something that's happening 100 years from now to someone else. We're sitting in New York City. We've seen the impact. It's happening here and now, and we need to continue to address the risks," he said.

"And when we're a coastal city with 520 miles of shoreline, the risks are pretty acute."

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Sea-level rise is a huge, overlooked economic threat to New York City, according to the official in charge of keeping the city from flooding

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Like most American cities that border an ocean, New York City is at risk for flooding due to sea-level rise. Sea-level rise not only threatens city infrastructure and the livelihoods of New Yorkers. It also poses a huge economic threat to the city's five boroughs, according to Daniel Zarrilli, the city's Chief Resilience Officer.

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The way you plant your garden and care for your yard can have a significant impact on what winds up in our sewer system. For one thing, planting trees, plants and grass can enhance the absorption of rain water and help prevent flooding. Whenever possible, consider planting rather than paving over your green space.

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The city is building more emergency shelters.

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The city is building more emergency shelters.

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In 2014,New-York floods were found out very late.The capacity of New York emergency shelters was just 10 000.
Now the city has created plans  to build up to an outsdanding capacity of 150 000.
https://www.lemonde.fr/ameriques/article/2013/06/12/un-plan-pour-proteger-new-york-contre-les-inondations_3428596_3222.html

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They can be caused by extreme weather conditions and climate change.
Rising sea levels caused by a warming climate threaten greater future storm damage to the city of New York.
Average number of days above 90°Fahrenheit is expected to at least double by 2050 and with increase global warming this could affect flooding.
Increased frequency and intensity of hurricanes (vents puissants & pluies torrentielles)

across the North Atlantic Basin which will cause more havoc and floods to the area
- Tous ces facteurs contribuent aux inondations, non seulement à New York, mais dans le monde entier.

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° les maison des familles detruite
° Le cyclone Sandy, alias «Frankenstorm», a fait au moins douze morts dont cinq à New York,
° Les zones très peuplées du New Jersey et du Connecticut ont été ravagées par les eaux.
° Trois des neuf records de hautes eaux enregistrés dans le port de New York l'ont été en mars 2010, août 2011 et octobre 2012 »

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Les phographes de l'agence AP sont revenus sur les lieux meurtris par Sandy pour réaliser de saisissants avant-après.

Le 29 octobre 2012, Sandy s'abattait sur la côte est des Etats-Unis, ravageant New York et le New Jersey. Conjugué à une forte marée, l'ouragan, a inondé 17% de Big Apple et provoqué des dégâts considérables, emportant des milliers de maisons. Les eaux sont montées jusqu'à 4,15 m dans le quartier de Battery Park. 43 personnes ont trouvé la mort à New York, 34 dans le New Jersey. Métro et tunnels submergés, routes coupées, système électrique hors d'usage, Sandy a révélé la vulnérabilité de New York. Un an après, la ville poursuit sa reconstruction et tente de se protéger contre les ouragans et la montée des eaux. Les phographes de l'agence AP sont revenus sur les lieux meurtris par Sandy.

A l'entrée du Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, le 29 octobre 2012, et le 20 octobre 2013 (photo : John Minchillo/AP). Le tunnel avait été totalement inondé par la montée des eaux.

Le Manhattan Bridge, vue depuis Brooklyn, le 29 octobre 2012 et le 17 octobre 2013 (photo : Bebeto Matthews/AP). A certains endroits l'eau a atteint 4,15 mètres.

Seaside Heights (New Jersey), le 30 octobre 2012 et le 22 octobre 2013 (photo : Julio Cortez/AP). Les pylones électriques avaient été arachés par l'ouragan, la six voies coupée.

Brian Hajeski, un habitant de Brick (New Jersey), le 30 octobre 2012 et le 22 octobre 2013 (photo : Julio Cortez/AP). Au petit matin, au milieu des débris, l'homme avait découvert l'ampleur des dégâts.

La promenade de bord de mer de Seaside Heights (New Jersey), le 22 novembre 2012 et 13 octobre 2013 (photo : Mel Evans/AP). Le dallage en bois, les lampadaires, les bancs, les aménagements publics, arrachés par Sandy ont été reconstruits.

Ortley Beach, à Toms River (New Jersey), le 25 avril 2013 et le 13 octobre 2013 (photo : Julio Cortez/AP). Les maisons qui bordaient l'océan, n'ont pas été reconstruites.

Un parking du Queens, le 14 novembre 2012 et le 17 octobre 2013 (photo : Marc Lenihan/AP).

Lire aussi le reportage à New York (en édition abonnés) : "Un an après l'ouragan Sandy, New York reste vulnérable"

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New York, un an après l'ouragan Sandy, en images

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Les phographes de l'agence AP sont revenus sur les lieux meurtris par Sandy pour réaliser de saisissants avant-après. Le 29 octobre 2012, Sandy s'abattait sur la côte est des Etats-Unis, ravageant New York et le New Jersey. Conjugué à une forte marée, l'ouragan, a inondé 17% de Big Apple et provoqué des dégâts considérables, emportant des milliers de maisons.

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Arcadis

It's time to start seriously planning for climate change in the city.

New York City didn't have to flood quite this badly, or, at least, it doesn't have to again. There's no shortage of ideas out there for how the city could adapt to rising sea levels (or, we'll just say it: climate change). A lot of them haven't been deployed or more seriously studied because they seem too expensive or daunting. But an event like Sandy quickly changes that calculus. Suddenly, some of these solutions don't look quite as expensive as cleaning up after a hurricane:

1. Sea Gates and Surge Barriers. We'll start with the biggie, a multi-billion dollar idea to keep storm surge out of New York by blocking it with some kind of moveable sea wall. Such infrastructure actually exists in England and the Netherlands, and a Dutch design and engineering firm was among several that presented ideas for such a barrier at a conference in New York City in 2009. Any surge barrier would have to be able to open for passing ships, while also doing the least to disturb the natural ecosystem. Arcadis, the Dutch firm, proposed putting this 4,800-foot-long barrier in the Verrazano Narrows. One large sliding piece of it, 860 feet long, would enable ships to pass and could be closed in advance of a storm.

Arcadis estimated at the time that the cost of constructing such a project would be about $6.5 billion. This sounds ridiculous. Until, of course, you see the estimated price tag on this week's damages.

2. Elevated infrastructure. There are very few buildings in the entire state of New York built at grade at elevations below sea level. But New York City has constructed one massive piece of infrastructure below that threshold: the subway system. As we saw this week, flooding can devastate an underground network of tunnels, train platforms and corridors. So how do you keep more of that water out? For one thing, elevating subway entrances would help. Bangkok, another low-lying city susceptible to rising tides, has built precisely these kinds of subway entrances. They're raised a meter off the ground and include built-in floodgates. A subway rider in Bangkok must first walk up a stairway from the sidewalk before heading down into the metro:

The New York MTA has also experimented in the past with elevating the grates that ventilate the subway system, another piece of transit infrastructure susceptible to flooding. Several years ago, the MTA commissioned architecture firm Rogers Marvel to design prototype elevated subway vents that would double as street furniture:

A bench like that wouldn't be high enough to keep out water during a 100-year-storm but could make a difference during less severe flooding.

3. Wave Attenuators. One of New York's biggest problems is that the city and the sea meet along such a hard edge. Development butts right up to the water, with little natural barrier separating the two or serving as a kind of buffer during floods. If New York could re-imagine its coastlines to include new wetlands or barrier islands along, for instance, the southern tip of Manhattan, that natural landscape extending out into the water could help mitigate the impact of a storm rolling in. Several of the architecture firms involved in the 2010 Museum of Modern Art exhibition "Rising Currents" (which we mentioned earlier this week) deployed this tactic in their plans for a new New York coastline.

Architecture Research Office and dlandstudio set out to rethink the "ecology and infrastructure in a sustainable partnership, thus changing the direction of the last 400 years of development." Along their graduated edge of Manhattan, they envisioned adding 80 acres of new park network, freshwater wetlands and tidal salt marshes extending into the upper bay.

4. Oysters and Sand. Two ideas for enhancing the natural protection of the city's beaches and harbors. "Beach nourishment" is an old one, in fact an idea that was apparently first tried in the U.S. at Coney Island in the 1920s. We already buffer communities from rising tides by adding to their beaches... literally trucking in sand. The state of New York currently does this with about 1 million cubic yards of sand each year. But according to a state climate change study published last year, New York will need to boost that amount by 2.3 to 11.5 percent by the 2020s to keep pace with expected sea level rise. By the 2050s, that sand volume will need to increase by 18 to 26 percent.

Or there's this: New York could truck in new oyster colonies to repopulate the ones we killed off over the years. Paul Greenberg wrote lovingly in defense of this idea in the New York Times earlier this week:

I'm not talking about oysters to eat - although a dozen would be nice to go with that leftover bottle of Champagne that I really should drink if the fridge goes off. I'm talking about the oysters that once protected New Yorkers from storm surges, a bivalve population that numbered in the trillions and that played a critical role in stabilizing the shoreline from Washington to Boston.

5. Different development patterns, duh. The previous two ideas would build out the coastline with added sand, marshes or man-made wetlands. But of course, it only makes sense to extend the New York coastline if we don't then insist on building on top of it. Grist posted some great historical maps earlier this week showing that the most flood-prone evacuation zones on the southern tip of Manhattan today sit atop landfill we created there in the past. We have a terrible track record of trying to build man-made land where water once was (who would have thought there would be such consequences!).

And so we should keep that in mind as we talk today about other interventions in nature at the coastline. Developers love waterfront property, and many of our best solutions involve creating new waterfront that will be no one's property (or reclaiming waterfronts for posterity). The most straight-forward solution would be to scale back existing development on New York's waterfront. But as the New York Times reported in an eerily prescient article in September:

The city's plan for waterfront development dismisses any notion of retreat from the shoreline. Curbing development or buying up property in flood plains, as some smaller cities have done, is too impractical here, city officials say, especially because the city anticipates another million residents over the next two decades.

About the Author

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5 Ideas That Could Have Prevented Flooding in New York

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It's time to start seriously planning for climate change in the city. New York City didn't have to flood quite this badly, or, at least, it doesn't have to again. There's no shortage of ideas out there for how the city could adapt to rising sea levels (or, we'll just say it: climate change).

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Sept mois après l'ouragan Sandy, Michael Bloomberg, le maire de New York, a dévoilé un ambitieux projet pour mieux protéger la ville et ses quelque 800 km de côtes contre les effets du changement climatique.

Le Monde.fr avec AFP | * Mis à jour le

Sept mois après l'ouragan Sandy, Michael Bloomberg, le maire de New York, a dévoilé un ambitieux projet pour mieux protéger la ville et ses quelque 800 km de côtes contre les effets du changement climatique, d'un coût estimé à près de 20 milliards de dollars.

"Notre ville sera dans les prochaines années plus vulnérable face aux inondations", a lancé Michael Bloomberg lors d'une conférence de presse, évoquant en particulier "la hausse des températures et du niveau des océans".

D'ici à 2050, 800 000 New-Yorkais vivront dans des zones inondables, qui couvriront le quart de la surface de la ville de 8,3 millions d'habitants, a-t-il souligné. "Sandy a coûté 19 milliards [...] mais une tempête similaire en 2050 pourrait coûter 90 milliards de dollars", a-t-il ajouté.
MURS ANTI-CRUE
M. Bloomberg a préconisé la construction d'une série de murs anti-crue amovibles dans le sud de Manhattan, le renforcement ou la création de dunes le long des côtes les plus exposées à Staten Island, Brooklyn et dans les Rockaways (Queens) et la création de digues et autres dispositifs de protection dans les endroits particulièrement vulnérables. Certains pourront faire selon lui jusqu'à 6 mètres de haut, et s' intégrer dans des projets surélevés.

Lire : " Après Sandy, New York cherche comment faire barrage aux ouragans"

New York compte quelque 835 km de côtes, et M. Bloomberg a déclaré qu'il n'était pas question de les abandonner, alors que ces dernières années des millions ont été dépensés pour leur revitalisation. Quelque 400 000 personnes habitent déjà dans des zones à risques, représentant 270 000 emplois, a-t-il souligné.

"Certaines des protections pour les zones côtières seront peut-être controversées. Certaines peut-être bloqueront la vue, a-t-il dit. Mais l'alternative c'est d'être inondé, ou pire. [...] Si nous voulons sauver des vies et protéger nos communautés, nous allons devoir vivre avec de nouvelles réalités."

ÉLÉVATION DES MERS DE 60 CM EN 2050
Les préconisations de M. Bloomberg font partie d'un rapport de 438 pages publié mardi, qui inclut les analyses d'un groupe de scientifiques étudiant pour la ville les effets du changement climatique. En 2009, ces scientifiques estimaient que les eaux autour de New York pourraient monter de 5 à 12 cm d'ici à 2020. Ils parlent désormais de 10 à 20 cm, et de 30 cm à 60 cm en 2050 ; 8 % de la zone côtière pourrait alors être régulièrement inondés, simplement par la marée.

La température pourrait en 2050 dépasser 32 °C, 57 jours par an à New York, contre 18 jours actuellement. Certaines tempêtes extrêmes pourraient générer une brutale montée des eaux de près de 6 mètres, dépassant le record de 4,2 m établi par Sandy.

L'ouragan Sandy, qui a frappé la côte est des Etats-Unis fin octobre 2012, avait fait 43 morts à New York. Il avait inondé une partie de Manhattan, privé d'électricité pendant plusieurs jours le sud de l'île et plusieurs autres quartiers de New York, et détruit de très nombreuses habitations le long des côtes. Il avait aussi paralysé les transports, créé une pénurie de carburant, et rendu inopérants les téléphones dans certains secteurs.

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Un plan pour protéger New York contre les inondations

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Sept mois après l'ouragan Sandy, Michael Bloomberg, le maire de New York, a dévoilé un ambitieux projet pour mieux protéger la ville et ses quelque 800 km de côtes contre les effets du changement climatique.

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For years, public officials and coastal residents of the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast were told that the region is extraordinarily vulnerable to storm surge from nor'easters and hurricanes, but it took Hurricane Sandy, an unprecedented combination of both of those storms, to realize the worst-case scenario on Monday evening. When the storm roared ashore near Atlantic City at 8 p.m. on Monday, it pushed a record high wall of water into Lower Manhattan and coastal New Jersey, flooding parts of Lower Manhattan, including many subway tunnels, splintering the famed boardwalk in Atlantic City, and washing away homes from coastal Rhode Island down to the southern tip of New Jersey.

Water pours into the Hoboken PATH station, viewed via a Port Authority surveillance camera and broadcast via social media networks on Monday night.
Credit: kenobryan/Instagram.

Hurricane Sandy killed at least 33 people in the U.S., knocked out power to more than 7.2 million people - 2.4 million of them in New Jersey alone. It also dumped up to a foot of rain in some places, and buried the higher elevations of West Virginia under 2-to-3 feet of snow. The storm has been unparalleled in meteorological history for its immense geographical scope, the multitude of hazards it unleashed, and the record storm surge it caused. It is almost certain that this storm will wind up being one of the top 10 costliest hurricanes on record, and it comes soon after Munich Re, a global insurance giant, warned of increasing natural disaster losses in the U.S., a trend the company said is related to global climate change.

At a Tuesday morning news conference, a weary New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said the damage done to his state is "unthinkable."

"It is beyond anything I ever thought possible," Christie said, noting that railroad freight cars were tossed onto the New Jersey Turnpike, homes were swept away from their foundations and onto a major coastal road, and rail stations in Hoboken, Secaucus, and Newark were flooded.

In New York City, the storm was the most devastating event to happen since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The storm surge at The Battery in Lower Manhattan was the highest ever recorded, and it surpassed even the most pessimistic forecasts, with the maximum water level reaching 13.88 feet above the average of the daily lowest low tide of the month, known as Mean Lower Low Water, including a storm surge component of 9.23 feet. That broke the official record of 10.5 feet above Mean Lower Low Water set in 1960 during Hurricane Donna, as well as a record set during a hurricane in 1821.

Or to put this another way, the water level at The Battery rose to 9.15 feet above the average high-tide line.

Facebook user Dann Cuellar posted this image of floodwaters inundating Atlantic City, N.J. on Oct. 29.
Click to enlarge the image.
Credit: Dann Cuellar.

Sandy's record-setting tidal flooding came in at the top end of storm surge forecasts, which were between 6-11 feet in Lower Manhattan.

The Wall Street Journal's Eric Holthaus said that since 1851, only a foot and a half separated the previous top 10 coastal floods in New York City, which includes some of the biggest storms to ever hit the region (Hurricanes Donna and Irene, 1991's the Perfect Storm, and several major nor'easters). "Sandy's new coastal flood record for New York City is more than 3 feet above the previous record - more than double the range between the previous top 10," he wrote.

Part of the reason the flooding was so significant was that the maximum surge occurred right around the time of high tide.

The high water poured into Lower Manhattan from the harbor and the swollen Hudson and East Rivers, with reports of extensive flooding in Battery Park City, the East Village, near Ground Zero, in parts of Brooklyn such as Coney Island, Dumbo, and Red Hook, and Staten Island. Numerous water rescues took place on Monday night, including some at police and fire stations that were located in low-lying areas.

Transit officials are just assessing the damage done when corrosive seawater poured into the subway system, one of the city's biggest fears. Mayor Bloomberg said that it could be several days before service is fully restored.

Officials had shut down entire subway system ahead of the storm, which may have helped to minimize lasting damage to electrical equipment. In total, the storm surge, which came on top of the unusually high tide triggered by a full moon, flooded seven subway tunnels under the East River, according to a statement from MTA chief Joseph A. Lhota.

"The New York City subway system is 108 years old, but it has never faced a disaster as devastating as what we experienced last night. Hurricane Sandy wreaked havoc on our entire transportation system, in every borough and county of the region. It has brought down trees, ripped out power and inundated tunnels, rail yards and bus depots," Lhota said. "In 108 years, our employees have never faced a challenge like the one that confronts us now. All of us at the MTA are committed to restoring the system as quickly as we can to help bring New York back to normal."

The New York Port Authority is also assessing flood damage at the area's major airports. At LaGuardia Airport in Queens, the East River overtopped a sea wall and flooded at least parts of the runways, and there were some unconfirmed reports on Monday night that it reached the terminal areas as well, and flooding was also observed at JFK Airport. New York area airports remain closed on Tuesday due to the flooding, since seawater may have damaged runway lights and navigation aids that help aircraft land safely.

Sandy Hook, N.J., also saw a record storm surge. The gauge stopped reading there at 8.1 feet above the average high tide level, while the water was still rising. Hurricane Donna in 1960 only reached 5.2 feet above the average high tide. Sandy also generated the third-highest storm surge on record at Philadelphia.

The storm, which technically made landfall as a post-tropical cyclone since it was losing the structure of a purely tropical weather system, according to the National Hurricane Center, also brought high winds, heavy rain, and heavy snows to the eastern third of the country.

A wind gust of 78 mph was recorded at Newark Airport, 79 mph at JFK, and 96 mph in Eatons Neck, N.Y. Gusts to hurricane force (74 mph or greater) were also recorded from North Carolina to Massachusetts as the storm's massive circulation -- measuring nearly a thousand miles in diameter -- moved inland. At the time of landfall, the storm had a minimum central pressure of 946 mb, which tied the record for the lowest air pressure reading for any storm to hit the northeastern U.S. An air pressure reading that low is an indication of the storm's ferocity; the only other northeastern storm that compares was the 1938 hurricane, which killed hundreds of people.

Can This Be Blamed on Climate Change?

While hurricanes are no stranger to the East Coast, they don't normally strike so far north this late in the season, since water temperatures are typically too cool to sustain them. However, this year, water temperatures off the East Coast were unusually warm. Michael E. Mann, a climate scientist at Penn State University, said that about 1 degree of the several degree water temperature anomaly can be attributed to manmade climate change.

In addition to the warmer than average ocean temperatures, the storm also was energized by a powerful jet stream that drove a strong push of Arctic air southeastward from Canada and into the Midwest and Southeast. This jet stream, and the clash of warm and cold air masses, injected the storm with an added dose of energy right before landfall, and helped it transition from a hurricane into a larger nor'easter that was just as strong.

At the same time, the upper air flow over the Atlantic Ocean was jammed by a powerful area of high pressure near Greenland and a storm system in the Central Atlantic, leaving the storm no escape route away from the U.S.

Satellite image of Hurricane Sandy as it strengthened over the warm ocean waters off the East Coast.
Click to enlarge the image.
Credit: NASA/NOAA.

The overall upper air weather pattern that steered Sandy Sandy, and helped it transition into a hybrid storm, is relatively unusual, but not unheard of. The problem is that the pattern is occurred at precisely the wrong time -- when a hurricane was moving out of the Caribbean.

Weather Channel hurricane expert Bryan Norcross wrote about this on Oct. 26. "The freak part is that a hurricane happens to be in the right place in the world to get sucked into this doubled-back channel of air and pulled inland from the coast," he said. "And the double-freak part is that the upper-level wind, instead of weakening the storm and simply absorbing the moisture - which would be annoying enough - is merging with the tropical system to create a monstrous hybrid vortex. A combination of a hurricane and a nor'easter."

Recent studies have shown that strong blocking patterns such as the one that is currently over the Atlantic have appeared with greater frequency and intensity in recent years. Some scientists think that may be related to the loss of Arctic sea ice, which is one of the most visible consequences of manmade global warming. The 2012 sea ice melt season, which ended just one month ago, was extreme, with sea ice extent, volume, and other measures all hitting record lows. The loss of sea ice opens large expanses of open water, which then absorbs more of the incoming solar radiation and adds heat and moisture to the atmosphere, thereby helping to alter weather patterns. Exactly how weather patterns are changing as a result, however, is a subject of active research.

Global warming is also expected to alter hurricane frequency and strength, making North Atlantic hurricanes slightly more powerful, while reducing the overall number of storms during coming decades. Detecting such changes in the observational record is difficult, considering the varying ways people have kept tabs on hurricanes prior to the era of hurricane hunter aircraft flights. A recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that warmer sea surface temperatures are tied to an increase in stronger Atlantic hurricanes.

Regardless of any changes in hurricane intensity, storms are already likely to produce more signiifcant coastal flooding, since sea levels have been rising during the past century, due to a combination of warming ocean waters and melting of polar ice caps. If Hurricane Sandy were to strike New York City in 2050, it would cause even more damage, since sea levels are expected to be considerably higher by midcentury. In fact, a recent study found that sea level rise has taken place at an accelerated rate at locations north of Norfolk, Va., and if this pace continues the Northeast could see much higher sea levels than other parts of the East Coast by midcentury.

Related Content
Hurricane Sandy Walloping East Coast With Surge, Winds
Hurricane Sandy Roars Ashore, Threatening Record Surge
Sandy's Storm Surge Explained and Why It Matters
Ongoing Coverage of Historic Hurricane Sandy
Hurricane Sandy Set to Deliver Massive Blow to East Coast
Hurricane Sandy's Five-Fold Flood Threat, with Local Maps
How Fujiwara Effect Will Toss Sandy Into U.S.
Officials Warn of Hurricane Sandy's Rare Damage Potential
How Hurricane Sandy Can Become a 'Frankenstorm'
Sea Level Rising Faster Than Average in Northeast U.S.
New York's 1-Inch Escape From Hurricane Irene

Helpful links for following the storm:
National Weather Service Storm Central
Climate Central Surging Seas Mapping Tool
New York Times Live Blog
Capital Weather Gang blog
Google Hurricane Sandy Crisis Map
FEMA

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Hurricane Sandy Paralyzes New York, New Jersey

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For years, public officials and coastal residents of the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast were told that the region is extraordinarily vulnerable to storm surge from nor'easters and hurricanes, but it took Hurricane Sandy, an unprecedented combination of both of those storms, to realize the worst-case scenario on Monday evening.

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New York City was not built to withstand an onslaught of floodwater.

Much of the city is protected only by sand dunes, vegetation, or low walls. New York's flood zones are packed with more than 400,000 residents and $129 billion worth of real estate. The aging sewer system handles both storm water and waste and is easily overwhelmed; Hurricane Sandy sent 1.6 billion gallons of raw sewage spilling into nearby waterways.

Even the city's position works against it. "New York City is vulnerable to storm surge because of its special location at the junction of the New Jersey coast and Long Island," says Ning Lin, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Princeton University. "If a storm comes, then the water would be pushed into that angle without any other place to go."

Lin has spent years studying how water could inundate New York. She's finding that flood damage will take a punishing toll on the city in coming years, and no single strategy to stem the tide will work for every neighborhood.

As climate change makes storms more intense and spurs rising sea levels, the danger to New York City will rise as well. Lin and her colleagues have estimated that storm tracks may actually shift eastward in the next several centuries, making hurricanes less likely to hit the city. However, sea level rise will mean that storms that do pass through New York will unleash higher floods. Floods that reached 7.4 feet above normal tides used to hit the city once every 500 years. Floods this height now happen roughly every 25 years, and will strike every five years by 2030 to 2045, the team reported in October.

"That's a dramatic change that we should consider in our planning for the city," Lin says. She is now investigating how much flood damage New York City can look forward to and how best to avert it, and presented her initial findings December 15 at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in New Orleans.

To calculate the flood risk facing New York City's buildings, Lin's team considered the hazards posed by more severe storms, rising seas, and development along the waterfront. They found that coastal development is unlikely to have much of an impact on the city's vulnerability because there is so little room to build. "The floodplain is already very full," Lin says.

However, sea level rise and more fierce or frequent storms will sharply increase the risk of flood damage. The researchers estimate that storm surge currently causes about $78 million annually in damage to New York's buildings. By the end of the 21st century, however, that cost could jump to the equivalent of more than $500 million.

Lin has begun to compare how much different flood defenses could minimize these losses. Hurricane Sandy galvanized New York into planning for future floods, she says. "It demonstrated how vulnerable the city is." The city is upgrading its subway system and designing buildings to be more resilient to floods. It's also considering more ambitious solutions like the "Big U," a giant barrier that would wrap around lower Manhattan. The proposal has been awarded more than $800 million by the city and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. However, construction is not expected to begin until 2020.

Until now, researchers have mostly considered coastal protection measures separately. But elevating individual homes won't do much to lower the city's overall flood risk, and building seawalls is expensive. It's likely to be more effective and affordable to combine different strategies in each part of the city, Lin says. Densely populated areas could be protected by more robust seawalls, while buildings could be lifted up in other flood-prone neighborhoods.

There may also be ways to construct seawalls more affordably in New York, Lin believes. We could build walls to withstand the risks posed by floods in the near term, and then raise them over time as the risk of vast storm tides grows. "But that has to be planned now," Lin says. She is calculating how levee heights would need to increase over time to protect the city.

New York is already ranked as the most vulnerable city in the nation to coastal flooding by Climate Central, and will probably continue to have the greatest number of people in floodplains in the coming decades. And even Lin and her team's most encouraging prediction-that storms may steer out to sea more in future-is far from certain. Other studies have drawn the opposite conclusion, meteorologist Jeff Masters of Weather Underground told New Scientist.

Whether or not the Northeast sees more hurricanes, the floods that do hit the city will become more devastating in the years ahead. For New York, there isn't a moment to lose in figuring out how to stay above water.

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New York City isn't ready for the catastrophic floods in its future

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New York City was not built to withstand an onslaught of floodwater. Much of the city is protected only by sand dunes, vegetation, or low walls. New York's flood zones are packed with more than 400,000 residents and $129 billion worth of real estate.

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Sea wall project to help prevent coastal flooding in New York City

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People of New York can only wait in shelters and help other people with rescue boats. At the begining of the floods, some New York citizens got trapped in the subway, 6 people died and more than 10 people injured.

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Les createurs de cette video montre qu'ils veulent se préparer pour les autres inondations dans le future. Ils proposent de contruire des endroits pour faire des activites dans des "bulles" protégé. Par exemple: une garderie ou un terrain de basket.
Dans les parcs, ils disent qu'ils veulent fabriquer des murs épais et mettre de la verdure dedant.
Tout ca pour vivre la vie normal de tout les jours.

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Flood defences for Manhattan: How to protect New York from storms and rising water

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Many hospitals were completely demolished by the water. The waves would smash everything that was in the way.Some people had to evacuate to higher levels of the building.
Houses were destroyed,all work and school was stopped .Normal citizens life was completely cut, they had to stay where they were for days.

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Cette video montre que l' eau a completement inondé la station de metro et que les New Yorkais ont proposé de faire des barrières pour proteger les stations de metro d'etre en panne.