Andrew Freedman writes in this Tabloid Climatology™ piece at Climate Central:
When Hurricane Sandy struck New York City on October 29, 2012, the dark waters of Flushing Bay poured over the edges of LaGuardia Airport, flooding parts of the facility’s 7,000-foot long east-west runway, and damaging lighting and navigation systems. The floodwaters created an eerie image of jetways ending in water, as if they had been converted into boat ramps.
This was not the first time that LaGuardia suffered major flooding during a storm, nor will it be the last. Due to climate change-related sea level rise, LaGuardia and other coastal hubs throughout the U.S. face a growing risk of flooding during even modest storms.
Now, wait for it….here’s the fake picture they rendered to show what this might look like:
What La Guardia Airport could look like with 5 feet of sea level rise, an amount that could occur by 2100, according to some estimates.
Click on the image to enlarge. Credit: Nickolay Lamm/StorageFront , for Climate Central, using Climate Central data.
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This is a ‘jumped the shark’ moment for Climate Central. Read the whole story here: http://www.climatecentral.org/news/coastal-us-airports-face-increasing-threat-from-sea-level-rise-16126
Gosh, I never knew that sea level rise was so abrupt that it would catch those speedy airliners off guard so fast they couldn’t move out of the way. The climate change onset was so fast…that maybe future archeologists will find fossilized passengers with half chewed peanuts still in their mouths.
UPDATE: reader “cotwome” provides this image of before and after LaGuardia was built.
Click for a larger image. Note the LaGuardia is all landfill, done in the face of sea level rise. But apparently future builders just won’t be able to keep up.
As they say, ‘the stupid, it burns’.
Read this story for some reality on NYC and sea level rise:
Freaking out about NYC sea level rise is easy to do when you don’t pay attention to history
UPDATE 2: Checking what the FAA says, LaGuardia is 21 feet above sea level by survey.
Source: http://www.airnav.com/airport/KLGA
So one wonders if there will be a retraction for the statement “What La Guardia Airport could look like with 5 feet of sea level rise” and of course the photo.
“Something a little odd about the plane in the foreground. It appears to be missing the number 1 engine.”
Ripped off during the water landing, no doubt.
Have to wonder why they’re still operating the airport nearly thirty years after the water started to cover the surface, too. I’d have expected it to be closed and traffic diverted to dryer locations.
Sorry. Its like buses, you check and there aren’t any, you wave a cab and suddenly three arrive at the same time.
Seems these boys are about 5 feet short of a full Boy Scout staff when it comes to telling the truth.
Let’s see….in about 300-400 years and 5 ft of sea level rise, there is a slight possibility we will have invented a different form of aviation vehicle. Or they may have repaved the runways by then with a waterproof coating. The possibilities seem endless.
Here is an odd statement from this article…”The storm struck at low-tide along the western part of Long Island Sound, while it was high tide along the New Jersey coast and in other parts of New York City.”.
Evidently Long Island was undergoing a low tide during Sandy while the rest of the region was under the influence of a full moon high tide. Long Island obviously has better control over the moon than New Jersey.
You’re all a bunch of uncaring louts!
Why…think of the great-grandchildren!
It’s like all you folks think we’ll be able to upgrade our infrastructure over the next 87 years.
Now c’mon, was our infrastructure around airports really that different in 1926…
er-r-r-r, never mind.
Mark says:
June 18, 2013 at 1:27 pm
Something a little odd about the plane in the foreground. It appears to be missing the number 1 engine.
If someone could focus in on the tail number or registration of that Delta airbus A319 we might be able to place it on a particular date.
http://libhomeradar.org/databasequery/index.php
Though they did say storm surge plus not sea level rise alone. 5 feet plus 16 feet of storm surge- a temporary disruptive situation.
Given that the 100 year average sea level rise is 3.2mm per year or 12.6 inches (1.05 feet) after 100 years, 5 feet will take around 476 years. However given that it has to rise at least 21 feet just to reach the runway or better yet, 21 feet + 5 feet, that comes to 26 feet or roughly 2,476 years. WOW, I can hardly wait to see it!!!!
You know how much ashphalt they leave on the ground every tiem they repave? hell i’d wager the land rise would far outweight even the sillly amounts of projected sea rise
Mark and two Cats says:
June 18, 2013 at 11:33 am
YOMANK
DaveL says in part, June 18, 2013 at 1:52 pm:
“Just a FYI: The entire airport is not one elevation. For example, the airport diagram from http://155.178.201.160/d-tpp/1306/00289AD.PDF (which is a link on the RHS of the website: http://www.airnav.com/airport/KLGA which is given as the source in the post) shows the following elevations:
Start of Runway 4: Elevation = 21 feet (this is labelled “Field Elev”)
Start of Runway 13: Elevation = 13 feet
Start of runway 22: Elevation = 12 feet
Start of runway 31: Elevation = 7 feet
The elevation in the terminate area is not given.”
The terminus of Runway 4 is the beginning of Runway 22.
The terminus of Runway 13 is the beginning of Runway 31.
Jose, can you sea?
goldminor says, June 18, 2013 at 3:31 pm:
“Here is an odd statement from this article…”The storm struck at low-tide along the western part of Long Island Sound, while it was high tide along the New Jersey coast and in other parts of New York City.”.
Evidently Long Island was undergoing a low tide during Sandy while the rest of the region was under the influence of a full moon high tide. Long Island obviously has better control over the moon than New Jersey.”
This may actually be true. I have seen strange lags of many hours in some water areas.
For example, the Delaware River’s tides at Philadelphia lags those at the New Jersey shore
by almost half a day.
In a hundred years we’ll all be wicked spiritual and will get where we want to go by levitating.
And oh, by the way, if the airport will look this bad with a five foot rise, it must have looked worse when Sandy rose the seas seventeen feet, right? Where is that photo?
Runway numbers match compass headings. So 04-22 and 13-31?
YYZ
http://www.torontopearson.com/uploadedFiles/B2B/Content/Existing_Business/AVOP_Program/2012April_sb90a042.pdf
Pray tell, what kind of ‘fill’?
Biodegradable compost material (GOOD LUCK with that being stable over time!) or – building rubble and/or ‘excavation materials’ from digging basements for Gold Vaults (like exist at the Fed and J. P. Morgan et al) on the ‘island’ of Manhattan in the CBD?
.
AnonyMoose says (June 18, 2013 at 11:37 am): “The red-tailed delta shark is most at home in shallow waters, where it is docile unless it runs low on peanuts.”
Runyway 04 = heading 040 degrees, plus 180 degrees yields 220 degrees (the reciprocal bearing), and Runway 22 = 220 degrees, minus 180 deg = 40 deg, so the answer is yes.
(It is quite likely the non-pilot public isn’t aware of this small but important factoid!)
Also it is good to be aware of the suffix “L” or “R” for left and right (parallel runways, e.g. at DFW airport) respectively (esp. WHEN one is actually piloting! There have been occasions where … well one can use one’s imagination …)
.
No surprise here. After all, Climate Central is the current home of the infamous “Weather Bimbo” A.K.A. Dr. Heidi Cullen. This photo shop of La Guardia fits perfectly with the photo shop on the cover of her current Worst Seller “The Weather of the Future”:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/01/heidi-cullen-doomcasts-in-new-stemwinding-sci-fi-thriller/
The jetways are still above water so no one gets their feet wet. Slap some amphibious floats on the little planes and everyone is good to go. I just don’t see a problem here.
Picture/image (depiction) inconsistencies:
– The furthermost right aircraft appears to have the wings placed at the *rear* of the fuselage.
– The water does not seem to ‘exist’ outside the confines of the ‘gated’/fenced-in runway or aircraft operations area of the airport.
– Does Delta presently operate from (what look like) two separate terminal buildings?
.
We are going to be extinct by 2100 so I whats the problem?
Twas rapid seal level rise which wiped out the Velociraptor.
“Billy Liar says:
June 18, 2013 at 12:00 pm”
Or a 4 engine plane with two engines on one side falling off/failing!
If you think this is bad tabloid coverage, come see what have in Aus.
Oh, this is interesting:
From: http://www.nycaviation.com/2009/10/happy-70th-birthday-la-guardia-airport/#.UcDxdOefjTo