(Bloomberg) -- New York’s odds of being flooded by a one-twopunch of extreme rain and surging seas have more than doubled inthe past 80 years, a change scientists say may be linked to globalwarming.
The number of so-called compound flooding events -- combiningheavy precipitation and a high storm surge -- have “increasedsignificantly” for much of the coastal U.S., affecting cities fromNew York and San Francisco to Boston and Galveston, Texas,researchers said in a paper published Monday by the journal NatureClimate Change.
Researchers found an increased connection between storm surgesand high precipitation, phenomena that forecasters and urbanplanners often treat as independent events when preparing forstorms, said lead author Thomas Wahl. How much of the change is dueto global warming or natural variation is unclear, but the datasuggest policy makers should reconsider where they buildinfrastructure and how flood zones are drawn, Wahl said bytelephone.
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