Specialists Weigh In on Hurricane Ida and Deadly Flash Floods in New York City
On August 29, the 16th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Ida made landfall in Louisiana as a Category 4 storm. In New York City, water flooded trains and basements in a matter of hours. Journalists and federal government authorities across the country are now trying to make sense of Hurricane Ida, its damages, and just how unanticipated they were. The rainfall from Hurricane Ida overwhelmed the New York City train system and momentarily shut down all rail lines. Klaus Jacob, a geophysicist at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, informed Gizmodo that the number of train lines that were closed down due to Hurricane Ida is “definitely the highest” that he has seen considering that 2012, when a storm rise brought on by Hurricane Sandy broke through train defenses.
Hurricane Ida is seen in this image taken aboard the International Space Station. Credit: NASA
On August 29, the 16th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Ida made landfall in Louisiana as a Category 4 storm. More than one million people throughout the state were left without power, including the whole city of New Orleans. In New York City, water flooded subways and basements in a matter of hours.
Reporters and government authorities throughout the nation are now trying to understand Hurricane Ida, its damages, and just how unforeseen they were. In response, professionals from the Columbia Climate School concentrating on severe weather condition, catastrophe strength, and environment science have offered their perspectives and insights. Here are a few of the questions they are helping to address.
How did climate modification contribute to Hurricane Ida?
The strength and strength of Hurricane Ida has actually highlighted the methods in which climate modification connects with serious weather condition. As Jason Smerdon, a climate researcher at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, told ABC News, Hurricane Ida is just the current in a series of ravaging extreme weather condition events across the Northern Hemisphere this year that have actually been “impacted by global warming.”
The Earths environment is presently about 1.2 degrees Celsius warmer than prior to the Industrial Revolution, Kate Marvel, an environment researcher at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and teacher at the Columbia Climate School, told NJ.com. She described that when the air heats up, it can hold more water, resulting in “an increase in very heavy rainfalls, specifically in the Midwest and on the East Coast.”
In an interview with the New York Times, typhoon specialist Suzana Camargo from the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory explained that heavy rains is likewise not distinct to Hurricane Ida. “We are seeing this boost in severe rainfall for all types of occasions,” she stated.
Why do New York Citys subways keep flooding?
Flooding in the Bronx the day after Ida went through New York City. Credit: Jim Griffin
The rains from Hurricane Ida overwhelmed the New York City train system and momentarily shut down all rail lines. Klaus Jacob, a geophysicist at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, told Gizmodo that the number of train lines that were closed down due to Hurricane Ida is “absolutely the greatest” that he has seen since 2012, when a storm rise brought on by Hurricane Sandy broke through train defenses. In an interview with VICE, Jacob attributed the storm-induced failures of the subway system to repeated political failures to focus on financing for the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA).
Adam Sobel, director of the Initiative on Extreme Weather and Climate at Columbia University, passed on a comparable point in an email to the Associated Press. After nearly 10 years of post-Sandy resilience planning at the state and regional level, he said “one might have hoped, in an alternate truth– where, for instance, the MTA werent chronically under-funded– that we may have seen a bit more advance on keeping water out of the subways.”.
Preparing New York City for future extreme weather condition occasions will require both mitigating the overflows of the citys sewer system, which can cause the train stations to flood, and establishing options to adequately obstruct train entryways in the event that overruns occur, Jacob told City Limits.
Are storms like Hurricane Ida the “brand-new normal”?
As the atmosphere continues to warm, extreme weather condition occasions are anticipated to be more regular and more extreme. In an e-mail to The Hill, Camargo said that multiple environment science studies have actually examined historic information and found that “we are already seeing a boost in the occurrence of the most extreme storms.”.
Hurricane Ida is the current example of how these projections are playing out in genuine time. Speaking to the Verge, Radley Horton, an environment scientist at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, said, “What were finding out is that the unimaginable might have always been most likely than we wished to confess– and with environment change, it becomes far more most likely.”.
This is not to say that it is far too late to address the increasing impacts of environment modification. Writing for CNN, Camargo underscored that “we can not continue to postpone taking significant action” to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. “The time to act is now,” she composed.
Sobel, in his viewpoint piece for CNN, concurred: “Speak out, arrange, give cash, vote. Lets all get to it, nevertheless we can.”.
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Elise Gout|September 10, 2021