From Virginia Tech something that makes you wonder about past storm intensity and the need to protect shorelines from storms coming from the sea. With all the hype surrounding “Superstorm Sandy”, it is interesting to see that 150 years ago, simple engineering made the storm less intense in this one area.
Long-forgotten seawall protected New Jersey homes from Hurricane Sandy’s powerful storm surges
Virginia Tech researchers say relic seawall came in handy for New Jersey town
Picture two residential beach communities on the New Jersey shore: Bay Head and Mantoloking, which sit side-by-side in Ocean County on a narrow barrier island that separates the Atlantic Ocean and Barnegat Bay.
Before Hurricane Sandy landed on Oct. 29, 2012, a motorist traveling north on Ocean Avenue would seamlessly travel through Mantoloking into Bay Head, noticing few changes in residential development, dunes, beaches, and shoreline.
The difference was hidden under the sand.
A forgotten, 1,260-meter seawall buried beneath the beach helped Bay Head weather Sandy’s record storm surges and large waves over multiple high tides, according to a team of engineers and geoscientists led by Jennifer L. Irish, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering in the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech and an authority on storm surge, tsunami inundation, and erosion.
The stone structure dates back to 1882. Its reappearance surprised many area residents, underscoring the difficulties transient communities have in planning for future threats at their shores, the researchers said.
“It’s amazing that a seawall built nearly 150 years ago, naturally hidden under beach sands, and forgotten, should have a major positive effect under the conditions in which it was originally designed to perform,” said H. Richard Lane, program director in the National Science Foundation‘s (NSF) Division of Earth Sciences, which funded the research. “This finding should have major implications for planning, as sea level rises and storms increase in intensity in response to global warming.”
The discovery, now online in the journal Coastal Engineering and slated for the October print edition, illustrates the need for multi-levels of beach protection in oceanfront communities, the researchers said.
“Once we got there, we immediately saw the seawall,” Irish said. “The beach and dunes did their job to a certain point, then, the seawall took over, providing significant dampening of the waves. It was the difference between houses that were flooded in Bay Head and houses that were reduced to piles of rubble in Mantoloking.”
With recovery efforts under way and storms still circulating through the area, Irish and Robert Weiss, an assistant professor of geosciences in the College of Science at Virginia Tech, with Patrick Lynett, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Southern California, documented high water marks, damage, overwash, and breaches of the barrier island.
All oceanfront homes in the two boroughs were damaged, ranging from ground-floor flooding to complete destruction. As measured by water lines on the interior of homes, flooding was similar in both boroughs. The difference was the extent of the storm’s impact.
In Mantoloking, the entire dune almost vanished. Water washed over the barrier spit and opened three breaches of 165 meters, 59 meters, and 35 meters, where the land was swept away. In Bay Head, only the portion of the dune located seaward of the seawall was eroded and the section of dune behind the seawall received only minor local scouring.
Later, using Google Earth to evaluate aerial images taken two years before and immediately after Hurricane Sandy, the research team evaluated houses, labeling a structure with a different roofline as damaged, one that no longer sits on its foundation as destroyed, and the remaining houses as flooded.
The researchers classified 88 percent of the oceanfront homes in Bay Head as flooded, with just one oceanfront home destroyed. In Mantoloking, more than half of the oceanfront homes were classified as damaged or destroyed.
Despite the immense magnitude and duration of the storm, a relatively small coastal obstacle reduced potential wave loads by a factor of two and was the difference between widespread destruction and minor structural impacts, the researchers said.
“We have a great deal of compassion for the people who have had to endure the devastation of Hurricane Sandy in Bay Head and Mantoloking,” Irish said. “It will have little solace, but we are left with a clear, unintentional example of the need for multiple levels of defense that include hard structures and beach nourishment to protect coastal communities.”
This research was supported by the National Science Foundation via grant EAR-1312813.
Modern politics is made up of delusions. The elite live in a make believe world where the masses are herded. Some have bought into this.
I often say to disbelieving friends that newer is not only not better, but usually it is worse. Here’s an example that goes further back than even I had expected. I’m reminded of the modern academic study which intended to embellish and correct an 1870’s study of how some birds’ feathers are blue — since no pigmentation is that color. The modern study in the end not only completely validated the old study, but marvelled at its rigor and exactitude which was way beyond the experience of the modern researchers. They were smart in those days. It’s been all downhill throughout the past 100 years, most unfortunately.
I hope the did a Environmental Impact Report before they put in that wall 150 years ago or there is going to be hell to pay!!!
150 years ago it was around 0.7 degrees cooler than today and the false gods of climate computer models were not even a figment of anyone’s imagination.
There was real science back then, not the type of science where the results are known before the research gets funded, as is all too often the case today, especially in ‘climate science’.
Someone decided a wall was needed to protect the coastline against the effects of bad weather – that’s just common sense. Today, in order to get funded, you would need to demonstrate that you wanted to protect the coastline against the effects of man made climate change.
The ecoloons have somehow made far too many of us believe that all bad weather is the obvious consequence of man made global warming/climate change/whatever.
As always, scary = funding.
Mmm!
There are groynes along the beach at Bay Head, but none at Matoloking. Don’t normally disagree with engineers, but the groynes means sand accumulated on Bay Head beaches and was lost at Matoloking, assuming north to south along shore drift. If south to north along shore drift then just sand accumulation at Bay Head, but still better protected by those groynes.
See! I told you guys to trust engineers to solve our future problems. I admit it will be based upon the ability of scientists to present unflawed science based on empirical observation, & “some” puter modelling up to a point. The real trouble is when we start designing defences based upon flawed data provided by said scientists! I suppose we could invoke our own standard Precautionary Principle, called in the UK “Murphy’s Law”, in which if it can go wrong it will go wrong!!!! 😉
Barrier islands do what barrier islands have always done, as Willis pithily reminded us the other day. Any one building anything on a barrier island had better work out where King Cnut went wrong. The fact that the wall had been covered with sand for the remembered past is a give away that these ephemeral strips of shifting storm toss should not be relied to be there in the morning.
Peter Miller said:
July 17, 2013 at 1:35 am
Today, in order to get funded, you would need to demonstrate that you wanted to protect the coastline against the effects of man made climate change.
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But after you got the funding, some enviroschmucks would get an activist judge to issue an injunction against building the seawall because it might threaten some “endangered” sand flea.
So we use Google Earth now to evaluate flood damage? Really? So a house that didn’t move was “flooded”, one that did move was “damaged”, and one that moved a lot was “destroyed”. That’s some fine-grained research there.
Nick Luke says:
[…] Any one building anything on a barrier island had better work out where King Cnut went wrong. The fact that the wall had been covered with sand for the remembered past is a give away that these ephemeral strips of shifting storm toss should not be relied to be there in the morning.
= = = = = = =
Don’t tell the Dutch.
“Haarlem is part of the mainland but looks to be located on what was once a barrier island.”
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/08/27/historical_map_shows_land_reclamation_in_the_nertherlands.html
Look at Cadiz
http://ooteoote.nl/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/cadiz.jpg
Then look at the sea wall
http://allisonhereandthere.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/cadiz.jpg
The big stone cubes placed asymmetrically break up the waves and protect the ancient walls. It’s a tsunami coast too, they don’t seem too worried about rising sea levels.
“This finding should have major implications for planning, as sea level rises and storms increase in intensity in response to global warming.”
And there it is. The usual, obligatory, anti-scientific Warmist dogma. And they have the nerve to call themselves “scientists”.
Unfortunately now that Corps of Engineers and and EPA are aware of it, it’s likely that this environmental hazard (wall) will have to be removed.
So the old wall reduced the wave energy and prevented the destruction of houses, but was overtopped as it did not prevent the flooding. Perhaps the rise in sea level since 1882 has made it too low.
1882 was one year when Tyndall gave Royal Institution lectures on heat, visible and invisible and water and air. Athough the discovery of the absorbative properties of CO2, the basis for the ‘greenhouse effect’, was actually measured a couple of decades earlier.
@Nick Luke
King Cnut was right, not wrong. The story is often garbled, but the King wasn’t demonstrating that he thought he could hold back the sea, he was demonstrating the limits of power. He knew he could not hold back the sea. Only Obama has that kind of power.
I thought storms were worse during the Little Ice Age.
More examples of terrific storms of the Little Ice Age.
http://www.climate4you.com/ClimateAndHistory.htm#An%20increase%20of%20mid-latitude%20storms%20during%20the%20climatic%20decline%20following%20the%20medieval%20warm%20period
Philip Bradley says:
July 17, 2013 at 1:39 am
> There are groynes along the beach at Bay Head, but none at Matoloking….
I’m no groin (US spelling) expert, but on my last visit to Long Beach Island decades ago groins had been installed and I climbed around them curious about the accumulation and depletion.
In this case, I don’t think the groins had much effect as the storm surge overtopped the groins and any accumulated sand. The photo at the top shows really clearly how the seawall absorbed the wave energy below the scouring level.
It also brings home how weak Sandy was there. A decent hurricane or nor’easter would have had no trouble ripping out that seawall.
Maybe 150 years ago,the village preachers claim forthcoming doom ?…….nothing changes, except the ‘religion’ of the preachers?
The only way this could possibly be explained is that there must’ve been a United Nations back then that we don’t know about. Just like today, that would account for the peace and tranquility they experienced back then. More to the point, that UN must’ve had an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. And that IPCC, no doubt, was able to peer 130 years into the future (it’s an old science really, Nostradamus was able to do it) and recognize that human contribution of CO2 into the atmosphere was going to cause sea level rise and Hurricane Sandy in 2012. So the IPCC ordered that infrastructure change for our own good. Sure, CO2 spewing universal electricity, automobiles, and jet aircraft were not even a glimmer in the eye back in 1882, but the UN could foretell these things 100 years into the future just like the Mayans knew what was going to happen in 2012 (ok, scrap that idea). Anyway, this is the only reason I can think of as the reason for the presence of that sea wall. And the only reason it didn’t extend beyond Mantoloking must’ve been because there was a sequester that blocked further funding. Now, I’m from Chicago, and if anybody questions my explanation I have one question, “Are you sure you’ve paid your taxes?”
Jimbo
Storms are worse when the psyentists say they are worse.
Once the present GW scare has run its course and the temps are on their way down again, then storms will be worse when it’s colder.
At the moment the grant money is on storms will be worse when it’s warmer.
Do keep up!
Because they were more practical 150 years ago and did not play the retarded act to get federal funds showered on them.
More climate change in the Little Ice Age.
NZ Willy says:
July 17, 2013 at 12:20 am
The modern study in the end not only completely validated the old study, but marvelled at its rigor and exactitude which was way beyond the experience of the modern researchers.
============
you find the same thing in ocean charts. the British Admiralty charts from the time of Cook, Bligh, Vancouver and Flinders show magnificent detail. it is strange that with much of the world’s economy based on shipping, nowhere on the modern charts is there a datum correction for global sea level rise. especially since just a 1 foot difference in ocean levels can mean the difference in millions of dollars in shipping costs.
yet the modern charts were almost without exception drawn from the older charts. the vast majority of the ocean depths have not been resurveyed since the age of exploration. It is simply too expensive as compared to the cost of press gangs and rum. so why is there no datum correction on ocean charts for sea level rise? Every modern chart has a WGS84 datum correction to align the world to Transit/GPS. Why not for sea level rise?
Richard Muller:
“Most of your skepticism is still valid. When something extraordinary happens in weather, such as the accidental occurrence of Hurricane Sandy hitting New Jersey and New York City just at the peak of tides — many people attribute the event to “climate change.” That’s not a scientific conclusion, and it is almost certainly wrong. Hurricanes are not increasing due to human causes (actually, they have been decreasing over the past 250 years).”
http://judithcurry.com/2012/12/13/week-in-review-121512/
“This finding should have major implications for planning, as sea level rises and storms increase in intensity in response to global warming.”
With this one line, Mr. Lane almost destroyed the credibility of this report. The idiots from NSF should just present the research and keep their biased mouths shut.