From Penn State and the “freaking out about sea level is easy when you don’ pay attention to history” department. (well worth a link click)
Sea-level rise, not stronger storm surge, will cause future NYC flooding
Rising sea levels caused by a warming climate threaten greater future storm damage to New York City, but the paths of stronger future storms may shift offshore, changing the coastal risk for the city, according to a team of climate scientists.
“If we cause large sea-level rise, that dominates future risks, but if we could prevent sea-level rise and just have the storm surge to worry about, our projections show little change in coastal risk from today during most years,” said Michael E. Mann, distinguished professor of meteorology and atmospheric science and director of Penn State’s Earth System Science Center. “While those storms that strike New York City might be bigger and stronger, there may be fewer of them as changing storm tracks increasingly steer the storms away from NYC and toward other regions.”
Coastal damage increases if the sea level is higher before a storm, and if the extra surge caused by the storm is higher.
The researchers looked at the history and future of both sea level and storm surge, from preindustrial times through 2300, in models that had been run for the full period. The researchers focused on results from simulations with rapid carbon dioxide release, often referred to as “business-as-usual” simulations. They reported their results online today (Oct. 23) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Future changes in sea level and storms would be smaller if actions were taken to slow climate change, such as the Paris Accord’s goal of limiting warming to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Sea level has been rising, and this is expected to continue as warming causes ocean water to expand and ice on land to melt and release water into the ocean. But, rapid change in the behavior of parts of the Antarctic ice sheet might cause much greater rise than is often included in coastal planning.
The researchers first calibrated their sea-level models to simulate the rates of historic sea-level rise. Then they ran simulations for the future, with and without results of a recent study that projects large future Antarctic ice sheet melt with business-as-usual increases in levels of greenhouse gases. Such large Antarctic melt implies large increases in sea level, globally and at New York City.
If this Antarctic instability occurs, the future risk to New York City is dominated by sea level rise. Then, according to Andra J. Gardner, postdoctoral fellow, Rutgers University, by 2100 the estimated 500-year flood height would be 17 feet, and by 2300 the 500-year flood height would be about 50 feet. A 500-year flood is one that has a 1 in 500 chance of occurring in any given year. Reducing warming enough to preserve the Antarctic ice thus would greatly reduce risk to New York City.
If sea-level rise remains small, then changes in storm surge are the most important concern for future coastal risk to New York City. In agreement with previous work, the models show that warmer future conditions allow stronger storms. But the models also show that the warming causes storm tracks to shift offshore and northward, away from New York City.
“If a shift occurs toward less common but possibly larger storms, it poses special challenges for coastal planners, and highlights the value of additional progress in understanding and projecting the tracks as well as the strength of these storms,” said Mann.
The paper describes the general agreement among the models studied that storms will strengthen and shift offshore with warming, but identifies important differences that could be reduced with further research.
“Sea level is rising and higher sea level increases the damages from coastal storms,” said Richard B. Alley, Evan Pugh Professor of Geosciences, Penn State. “Human decisions about energy will be important in determining how much the sea rises and thus how much damage we face, and accurate projections of storms will help in minimizing the risks.”
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MSL has been rising globally at the same rate since the depths of the LIA during the Maunder Minimum, c. AD 1690. That’s about 2 mm per year. This rate has not accelerated since WWII, when CO2 took off.
The East Antarctic Ice Sheet, repository of most of the fresh water on the planet, is growing. It quit retreating about 3000 years ago.
So at the present and historical rate, unless another cool cycle kike the LIA intervenes, MSL should have gained some 160 mm by 2100 and another 400 mm by 2300, for a total of about 22 inches.
Meanwhile, the Atlantic coast around NYC is subsiding, as Hudson’s Bay rebounds from its lost weight of ice sheet, so there might be as much as two feet more of seawater in NY Bay as now.
Scary!
Not.
NY Times and Washington Post will make a scary story of it. Few people take them seriously today, and this will make more of a laughing stock of them. Why not? We all need a good laugh.
If they promised that it would flood DC as well, I would support it.
And another claque de revers for warmists.
https://www.iceagenow.info/sea-levels-rising-10000-years/#more-23254
How much of the land affected by the so-called “sea level rise” is actually fill, or “reclaimed” land?
As a NYC resident for over three score years, I can say without any reservation that areas like Battery Park City(the earth from the excavation for the World Trace Center), La Guardia Airport, as well as coastal areas Brooklyn ans Queens are all filled land,
Additionally, much of the areas were historically swamps, filled-in by real estate developers.
Mother Nature always reclaims what is hers. It might take some time but “You bet your sweet bippy” she will eventually take it back.
“You bet your sweet bippy.” And, I’m old enough to remember Laugh In, where that saying came from. Oy!
Did you know the whole planetary surface is dragged up and down >40 centimetres per day as gravity drags the visco elastic sphere around? Straightforward scince over 100 years old. Who knew? The tectonic plates are just a collection of VERY thin scabs a few Km thick held onto the 12,000km diameter molten Upper mantle by gravity alone, as are the water, air and us. And insignificant people worry about their effect on this system? They are so eak minded to have such beliefs. . We can’t change anything. We will die. Others will be born and die until the water or carbon cycle stops supporting us, and then we will all be gone. Get over it.No one can leave and return to anything resembling what they left, as they will have to travel close to C speed. There is no god, no reason to exist. It’s jusr random space time. Enjoy consciousness while you can, it’s more than the animals get.
It’s only about America? Hardly global, a few precious people and their over privileged religions for profit. , Who cares? Build another wall with the money saved from proscribing AGW religion and its totems? I thought this link highly relevant, given the watery topic. Off to watch Blue Planet 2 now 😉
?dl=0
Mann, who appears to be as multi-awarded person – medals for ping-pong – possibly.
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhgggggrh
Give me strength.
Anything this gentleperson touches appears to be covered in the proverbial southern excretia from a northerly headed bovine of the male gender.
And this is models, models, models – all the way down.
BS In – BS Out.
Sorry.
Auto
Well the UN is not too worried.
Check my blog at
https://thedemiseofchristchurch.com/2016/05/06/un-headquarters-and-usd1-2-billion-upgrade-and-rising/
Cheers
Roger
Subsidence is the issue. Not seal level rise. What total and complete idiots.
Just call in the Polar Bears and the Great White sharks. Problem solved.
What?
Sea Level?
Not seal level?
Never mind.
Gordon Thank you!
One thing I struggle to find anywhere in discussions of data based on tidal sea level gauge measurement is any consideration and ADJUSTMENT FOR non sea caused issues which must surely be taken into account if we are to fully make sense of data from world wide tidal gauges. By this I refer first to emergence and submergence due to tectonics and glacial rebound and also subsidence for groundwater extraction which has diddlesquat to do with changes to the volume of seawater but must still be accounted and adjusted for. I first got into this attending a seismic stratigraphy conference as a very young geophysicist and listening to the great and the good arguing over jump correlation of this or that high stand or low stand from place to place all the time referencing a constant mean sea level. In a rash moment I raised my hand during questions and asked if any of them had considered not just sea level going up and down relative to the land but also and importantly the land moving up or down relative to the sea caused by amongst other things tectonics and suggested humbly that until they took those tectonics into account there would be no way they could hope calibrate the stratigraphy accurately.. There was a very long and a very pregnant pause as they looked to one another as to who was going to deal with the damage limitation. So back to the present. I was drawn to look to see how these non “sea” volume change causes were being accounted for because I saw frankly bizarre media stories about places sinking rapidly, at rates far in excess of the numbers cited for global changes in the average level of what is after all a self leveling “liquid”. What was more puzzling was that these sexy alarmist sea level rises were being cited from specific locations without questioning why places not far away had no obvious imminent problems of disappearing beneath the waves whatsoever. Indeed it is as if the bigger the apparent rise at a given unique location then the better for the alarmists untroubled as they are that differing rates of sea level change from place to place appear to defy physics. The BBC, a much troubled and tainted media outlet has bought AnCC (Man = Global warming=Climate change) big time. Their “science correspondent” has produced some truly dreadful and biased alarmist articles but one of my favorite was a sob story along the lines that the Mekong Delta and Miami where in danger of being drowned because of Climate Change. Indeed, Miami is frequently the poster child cited by some I can only suggest “thick as a whale omelett” Senators as proof of the terrible consequences of man’s usage of fossil fuels and the consequential rise in sea level it brings. I have even watched some Senate hearings where they have proudly shown pictures of Miami under water while chastising those before them who dared to play down the possible effect man was having. Here was the “proof!”. It takes I would say no more than 3-5 minutes googling to find papers in respectable journals clearly discussing the real cause which is LOCAL subsidence of the land because of ground water extraction exacerbated by increasing population and nothing to do with some bizarre local sea level rise Bermuda Triangle. Indeed in the case of the Mekong, deltas subside all on their own as they dewater, that is what deltas do which is how they build up stratigraphy for geologists to pour over. Suck the water out and they subside even faster. This being the case how is this rubbish repeatedly being promulgated as some kind of proof positive that sea level rise is accelerating supported by that other leap of faith…that this is all caused by man? Another of my bug bears are the sinking Pacific Atols. An atol or underwater a gyot is an extinct volcano. They sink, that is what they do all on their own because the hot spot which produced the volcano has moved relative to the position of the volcano on the plate (actually it is usually the plate moving relative to the hotspot). With no hotspot beneath it, the oceanic crust subsides. They sink at different rates which must tell the alarmists that something else is going on surely? There are examples submerged gyots adorned with fossilized reefs at great depths, nothing at all to do with relative sea level change. Basic and well documented science is being ignored and no one seems to care. The few brave souls who do care and People who point out the fundamental often schoolboy errors are shamefully vilified publicly. What form of science behaves this way? If it deserves the title science it is most definitely not sure of itself. To promulgate such poor thinking you need an audience which is dim witted enough not to question paradigms or sacred cows, one which has been brought up to learn what to think, not how to think and by heck we are churning them out of schools in their thousands on both sides of the Atlantic pre primed with all of the AnCC mantras. The Gore-on must be proud of what he has achieved but at what financial cost to us all and our children’s future?
I’m sorry, but I couldn’t bring myself to read your unbroken stream of consciousness. :^/
And, they call themselves scientists. How embarrassing.
rule of thumb is, true scientists do not call themselves “scientist”. They call themselves physicist, chemist, biologist, etc.
bingo … one doesn’t receive a PHD in “Science” … anyone can be a scientist … some people have more credentials than others …
Interesting that when celebrity scientists with NO formation is the disciplines of engineering and applied physics in the subject of energy generation relate renewable energy to the AGW issue as an actual scientific solution, they are usually described as “scientists” and “Doctor”, because using their actual discipline might make people more careful of believing them, often rightly so. In fact many are practitioners of statistical hit and miss pseudo science with small grasp of the sceptical absolutism of physics, and think that if they can believe in things then they must be right and everyone should believe them. Not today, thank you. #Paul Nurse, #Robert Winston, #Helen Caldicott, #David Attenborough, #Jeff Patterson (A BBC “expert” from Wisconsin on radiobiology and Osteopath. You can’t make it up, that’s their job.
Maybe climate “scientists” don’t want people to know of their qualifications?
This one’s hardly worth the effort of making a comment, so I won’t.
Of course sea level rise threatens New York City. Sea level will go up 10 feet, and then storm surges will flood out the whole place.
Of course it will take 1000 years to get there.
I can understand the panic of the residents. They have no idea how to cope with this disaster with only a 10 century lead time.
“Sea-level rise, not stronger storm surge, will cause future NYC flooding”
What should we do?
Cut fossil fuel emissions?
https://ssrn.com/abstract=3023248
But with the stronger storms wouldn’t we expect stronger storm surges?
Reverse time!
What should we do? Maybe we should start a fund to enroll these pseudoscientists in a stratigraphy class so that they can actually learn about the science of sea level before writing a paper about it. As a geologist, professor Alley should know better than to subscribe to this grade school concept of bath-tub sea level, shameful.
What this study neglects is the fact that there is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate. There is no such evidence in the paleoclimate record and there is plenty of scientific reasoning to support the idea that the climate sensivity of CO2 is zero. The previous interglacial period had warmer periods then today with more ice cap melting and higher sea levels. Mother Nature via primarily the sun and the oceans is responsible for climate change. Man does not have the power to force Mother Nature to change the climate according to Mankind’s dictates. If we following what had been happening is that the modern interglacial period is gradually fading but it still may be several thousand years before we can say that the next ice age has begun. The next ice age will help to significantly lower sea levels as contenental ice sheets return.
Let the groups talking on global warming and its catastrophic impact should present the climate sensitivity factor to CO2!!! Without doing this making and printing thousands of papers will worth nothing. We must raise this at every opportunity to stop such publications entering the media.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
Aye!
Not to overlook other failings of the study:
• Jump to gross assumptions without evidence. e.g.
• • the gross assumption that Antarctica will melt, without evidence
• • The Paris agreement will have greater than negligible miniscule effect, at maximum compliance.
• That every future effect is disaster causing.
• • e.g. Storms will be bigger, storms will be more powerful
Who knew that geoscience programs could predict disasters, dangerous storms, Antarctica warming, etc. using a fudged custom tailored program; “The researchers first calibrated their sea-level models to simulate the rates of historic sea-level rise. Then they ran simulations for the future”
Alleged researchers, aka “jumped up lackeys” seeking false glory and riches.
Calling yourself a “scientist” is easy, acting like one is hard part. In the case of climate scientists it seems to be an impossible task.
It seems to me that there are far too many cases where “climate scientist” is an oxymoron.
Indeed. Here’s an interesting working paper that discusses the state of “climate science” from a scientific point of view from an outsider.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/319326670_The_Power_of_Falsification_Developing_a_Greenhouse_Gas_Theory
Outright piffle. Who are these twerps? Professors of mickey mouse model making. Forsooth!
Mann is not deterred by his record of making bad predictions from making more predictions. At least Harold Camping and other evangelicals who predicted the Second Coming and got the date wrong had the good grace to stop.
I believe they can tell us who will win the World Series in 2300. Surely they have a model for that.
/snark
The Minot Yankees will win in 2300 by beating the Omaha Dodgers. Both coasts will be under water. Didn’t you get the memo?
They’ll also be playing in Denver (Coastal stadiums will be under water)
Wow
Even though these people are from Rutgers university in nj, they were not able to visit real NYC.
LOOK
Canarsie area in Brooklyn is named so because canarsie Indian tribe used to harvest their oysters for wampum . That was during global cooling. Now it is dry land
South shore of Staten island used to be oysters marches up to 1950’s. Now it is dry land
Manhattan was flooded up to Canal street in 1826.
British landed in Staten island in 1776 and at that time water was splashing onto Richmond terrace, i.e whole Saint George ferry was underwater during global cooling time
Castle Clinton was surrounded by the water in 1826, now it is dry land
Liberty island is now twice it’s size compared with 1889. So is Governor island
Give me a break, please
So you ask what was 500 yr flood limit in 1826? Good!
The 500-year flood occurs every 25 years now, and will increase [yes, increase] to 5 years within 3 decades. Mindless BS.
True, BS.
my model gives 3 feet of sea level rise extra… can i get more funding to do more investigation?
the name of the modeli sued to have this extraordinary finding? it called…….
…..
….
my vivid imagination 🙂
Look all the climate models have acronym names and a version number so can I suggest a name for your model, Great Imagination Model Projection 1.0 …. or GIMP1.0
GIMP is a freeware graphics program.
Um, come to think of it, just what you need to produce the next terrifying graph from the data that was mysteriously erased on the NOAA computer.
Never mind…
Gnu Image Manipulation Program?
Is that what Al gore uses?
He’ll just keep GIMPing along, LdB, with a little help from government grants.
GIMPS use full body latex suits for their sexual fantasy’s….. so GIMP is appropriate for climate models & their fantasy’s.
Couldn’t the poor residents of Manhattan and Newark relocate to the ice free Antarctic? Just a thought.
This blog features some really smart and educated people, but it is slowly being whittled down to the lowest common intellectual denominator.
A little mirth now and then is healthy for the wiseth of men (don’t recall where that came from. Alexander? Nye? Shakespeare?)
It is an indication of where climate science has ended which was totally predictable. Politically very little will happen, the data and public opinion will bumble along until things become pressing. If climate science got it right we will at some point needing to do some atmospheric engineering, if they got it wrong there will be a witch hunt and naming and shaming within the field. The error made was allowing politics to enter the science and now politics and lots of people have moved on, it’s mostly just esoteric arguments.
The internet has a very long memory.
Every job these shysters seek in the future wil have employers doing a quick internet search.
A) Inflated claims
B) Ignored contradictory evidence
C) Fully espoused unproven theories
D) Participated in trashing critics and rivals
E) Promoted prosecution towards skeptics and questioners
etc. etc.
Oh, yeah; these guys will have employers fighting to hire them…
Quite a large part of southern NYC was marsh or water not that long ago. Now there is a lot of valuable dry land.
Just as Seattle was raised by one story in a few years, the same could be done with any other city.
For those who don’t know, Seattle was only four ft above sea level and flooded periodically. After the catastrophic fire it was rebuilt one story higher using a small hill for source material. You can go on an underground tour of the old buildings under the street for a small fee. One of the unusual things down there is the world’s first ATM. Without the ‘A’ really. There was a guy inside.
They used big water hoses spraying salt water (driven by wood fired steam-driven pumps) from the sound to wash down the 150 foot high cliffs into the sloping uncompacted fill down to the waterfront.. When the Big Cascadia Quake comes, it will liquify that slope and the entire Seattle water front will slide into the Sound, skyscrapers, Market stalls, and all… into the water.
Yeah but doing Earthworks was possible back then apparently as a western civilization we have lost that ability according to climate science. China who is the pinup child for all the climate loonies has itself made a massive blunder, it’s man made islands in the South China Sea will be well under water which probably says a lot about what China actually believes.
Sea Level Rise has been stuck at around 7 inches per century since 1800 regardless of CO2 levels.
Sea Level Rise has been flat for the past 3 years, and with the AMO quickly approaching its 30-year cool cycle, Greenland’s land ice mass will likely start to increase, while Antarctica is already increasing land ice mass at around 80 billion tons per year.
If collapsing solar cycles lead to global cooling as many astrophysicists believe, glaciers and polar ice cap may actually start gaining ice mass and the oceans may start to cool, which would lead to falling sea levels in the decades ahead.
BTW, the Niño 3.4 Index just fell below -0.5C yesterday, so it seems likely a double-dip La Niña cycle will officially be in effect from January 2018, which will offset most of the warming spike from the 2015/16 Super El Niño…
Poor Leftists can’t seem to catch a break these days..
“…but if we could prevent sea-level rise and just have the storm surge to worry about, our projections show little change in coastal risk from today during most years…”
If we could prevent sea-level rise, it would theoretically mean pausing global temps (or possibly cooling them).
Coming to an equilibrium level with sea levels that are the same as those of today would mean there would be an IDENTICAL coastal risk as today. Even given the possibility of static conditions, Mikey still wants to make it seem like things will get worse, even if just a little in some years.
“…The researchers looked at the history and future of both sea level and storm surge, from preindustrial times through 2300, in models that had been run for the full period….” Need I say more.
We can hope for a miracle…. that is that the UN Building will collapse into the East River while in full session.
The basic problem I see here is that the model is tuned to use “business as usual” values for CO2. Without being explicit I suspect BAU is in reality the IPCC RCP 8.5 scenario. What is not being stated at all is that possibility of the RCP 8.5 scenario playing out is highly unlikely. Given that as an input, the projected outcome is also highly unlikely.
Most assuredly RCP 8.5, AussieBear: “The researchers focused on results from simulations with rapid carbon dioxide release, often referred to as “business-as-usual” simulations.”
They have been pushing this BAU crap so long that they actually get away the RCP 8.5 wildly exaggerated and physically impossible assumptions. Read about them yourselves, skeptics.
And the West Side Highway STILL isn’t underwater.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/10/22/a-little-known-but-failed-20-year-old-climate-change-prediction-by-dr-james-hansen/
Well it might be, it all depends on where they dumped the waste after it was demolished shortly after the Hansen quote. At that time NY was dumping in the ocean about 100 miles offshore, could be in landfill either.
Its replacement was closed by flooding as recently as May
https://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20170505/midtown/flood-watch-penn-station-flooding#
Here’s a view from 2012
http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/dam/assets/121030073448-sandy-flooding-west-side-highway-c1-main.jpg
In 2300. Wow. These guys must be really smart.
Who pays for this garbage.
+10
Now to get a scary story we project 300 years in advance as if NYC will still look like it does in 300 years. I would hazard a guess there aren’t 20 buildings in NYC that are 300 years old.
Per the Wikipedia list, there are nine built in 1717 or before. That is, in what most people except natives call “New York City” – there is only one actually in The City proper. The rest are in Queens, Staten Island, on some of the small islands off of Long Island, etc.
One of their listings is for a “carpenter’s shed” on Gardiner’s Island, purportedly built in 1639. Now, that was one hell of a carpenter!
Someone, no one knows who, set lower Manhattan on fire when the British evacuated it at the end of the Revolution.
Didn’t even have to be arson in those days. People don’t realize just how recently most cities have stopped being massive conflagrations just waiting to happen.
Of course, even in those days, there were some buildings that survived. Imperial Rome, even the Temple of Jupiter, arguably their most important building, was wood – it was a major disaster when it was burned to the ground in one of their little succession disputes. (If I recall correctly, when one side was trying to get at the young Domitian, when he was second in line for the purple.)
Smart enough to know they will be long gone so in no position to be reminded of their BS
How many “ifs” are in the paper? That’s all Mann does is ask “if,” then create a model based on if. He’s really just a one trick pony
He makes smoke machines to shout Fire! in crowded climate conferences.
“If I had a model,
I’d model out past war-ar-ming,
I’d model seas ri-ri-sing,
All over this land,
I’d model up danger….”
One trick phony?
…the Paris Accord’s goal of limiting warming to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit.
or the Paris Accord’s effect of limiting warming to .2 C (MIT, 2015)
or .17C (Lomborg, 2015)
or .6C (Rogelj, 2016)
or …. ?
A discussion of these speculations that is more balanced than I would have expected:
http://www.factcheck.org/2017/06/will-paris-tiny-effect-warming/
Lol, yes. The larger EFFECT, the larger sensitivity and the smaller probability of reaching the Paris GOAL. Also, future politics is not something you can predict too far into the future, so making claims altogether is rather streched. Paris will not do a significant difference even if you believe in the high end of IPCC’s sensitivity estimate. You’d need nuclear for that. And gas. And China to reduce its CO2 emissions under the UK.
Is it ‘the larger the effect’? The inquiring mind wants to learn.