Global trends in tropical cyclone risk
This article addresses the understanding of how global warming will affect hurricane surges, based on the observation that storm surges are responsible for much of the damage and loss of life associated with landfalling hurricanes. The authors simulated large numbers of synthetic surge events under projected climates and assess surge threat, as an example, for New York City (NYC), which is highly vulnerable to storm surges.
The article asserts that the change of storm climatology will probably increase the surge risk for NYC; results the distribution of surge levels shifting to higher values by a magnitude comparable to the projected sea-level rise (SLR). 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.
Abstract reprinted by permission from Macmillan Publishers Ltd: Nature Climate Change (2012), advance online publication, 12/02/2012, doi:10.1038/nclimate1410
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