The chance of floodwaters overtopping Manhattan's seawalls and inundating parts of the city has skyrocketed at least 20-fold since the mid-1800s thanks to swelling seas and mounting storm surges finds a new study.Link to the study at the ... link.
| They could build a big honking dike across the lower Bay with gates, flood bridges and controls that would stop this. A |
The reasons for the local sea level rise are well-understood: global warming has caused sea water to expand while melting glaciers and icesheets have deposited more water into the oceans. At the same time, the land surface has been sinking.
At least they didn't say "man-made global warming"; I guess that's understood by WaPo readers. This next part, I found interesting, since the reasons cited may also have global warming connections, too.
Explanations for the increase in the storm tide are more complex. Per the AGU study summary:
About half of long-term change could be attributed to decades-long variations in the North Atlantic Oscillation, an irregular fluctuation of atmospheric pressure over the North Atlantic Ocean that has a strong effect on winter weather in Europe, Greenland, northeastern North America, North Africa, and northern Asia.
A natural fluctuation? Do tell!
Longer-term trends could also be influencing the increase in storm tides over the past two centuries, according to the paper. The authors speculate that climate change and increasing global temperatures could be contributing to the increase in storm tides. There could also be local factors, like deepening of shipping channels around New York harbor, that could have affected storm tides in the area over the past 170 years, Talke said.
Local factors, like maybe - the development of all the New Jersey 'meadowlands' (wetlands/swamps)and half of lower Manhattan?