Storm surge and torrential rain. Hurricanes that are heavy on both of these factors can have a devastating impact on communities that line the coastlines of the United States. And a new study says these types of storms will grow much more frequent in the coming years.
The danger zone is vast: from Texas to New England.
The major threat comes from compound flooding, which comes from the combination of heavy rain and extreme levels of storm surge.
Storms like Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Florence caused historic damage and dozens of deaths due to these factors.
These are the types of storms that scientists at Princeton University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) wanted to better predict, so they looked at past data and found that storms like these were exceedingly rare in days gone by, both on the nation’s southern and eastern coasts.
How rare? A coastal resident might only experience this type of storm once in a lifetime if at all.
But as scientists added climate change data to the mix, the formula predicted a much greater frequency of these types of storms moving forward, especially in the northeast U.S.
Chances of this type of storm impacting New England and further south towards the Carolinas and Florida rose from a 0.1% chance to a 10% chance in any given year, according to the findings published in the journal Nature Climate Change.
“In this study, we emphasize that rainfall is going to be a big player in the future flood risk,” said Princeton environmental engineer Ning Lin, one of the study’s authors.
Lin added that when heavy rain mixes with the already-expected storm surge threat, the damage in coastal communities becomes much more widespread. “In the future climate, these will become frequent events that we definitely have to prepare for,” Lin said.
One solution is for community planners to think long-term and upgrade major infrastructure with projects that elevate roadways and divert potential floodwaters away from power and wastewater treatment plants.
“A study like this is a reminder that we can't do things the same old way,” Chad Berginnis, executive director of the Association of State Floodplain Managers, told NPR. “For instance, we can't replace infrastructure in-kind. The same size, the same location, the same way. We need to be intentional in building resilience into those decisions.
“When you're talking about flood resiliency in a coastal zone, you probably need to be looking on the order of 50 to 100 years out,” Berginnis said.
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