How climate crisis makes rainstorms that flooded New York more common | New York

Monday evening showers were one of the most intense rain storms in New York history, the kind of storm that now occurs much more often due to global warming.

More than 2 inches of rain fell into New York Central Park at 7 p.m. Monday evening, part of a regional downpour that filled the city’s motorways and metro tunnels and caused several water rescues.

The rains were even more intense elsewhere in the region. More than 2 inches of rain fell in just 30 minutes in Brewster, New York, in the Hudson valley.

In the county of Union, in New Jersey, more than 6 inches of rain fell in just over an hour and at least two people died when the vehicle in which they were traveling was washed from the road. Phil Murphy, the governor of New Jersey, said the state of emergency due to strong precipitation and advised people to avoid unnecessary travel.

“Jersey is floods. I have never seen the motorways flooding. It’s crazy. The climate crisis is literally outside at the moment,” wrote a person from New Jersey on social networks.

The rains occurred as a result of what the national weather service called a “rapidly evolving scenario” while a slow cold front began to interact with an extremely loaded humidity drawn from the Atlantic Ocean warmer than normal. The NWS had given the hardest affected regions, including New York, an advanced opinion with numerous flood warnings.

Intense rain periods like the one on Monday caused growing problems throughout the region as the climate changes. NYC is now an additional day of heavy rains each year, on average, compared to the end of the 19th century.

A widely shared video seemed to show flood waters that erupted the sewer system like a geyser at the Midtown Manhattan 28th Street station, spilling into a blocked metro car filled with people.

“What happened last night is something that is a reality for our system,” said Janno Lieber, CEO of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, in an interview with a New York television station. “The rainwater system is saved and is overwhelmed and tunnels in the stations.”

While the city’s metro systems are designed to drain a maximum of 1.75 inch of rainwater per hour, the 2.07 inch of rain was the sixth total time since the start of New York weather registers in 1869 and the most intense rain storm since the remains of Hurricane Ida in September 2021. floodable basement apartments.

A rain storm exceeding the metro design limit has never been recorded before 1991 but has occurred six times since, including Monday rains. A study published last year has shown that rain storms like that of IDA are now between four and 52 times more probably due to the climate crisis. A distinct study in 2021 revealed a similar result and also noted that rain storms in the northeast region are the fastest increase in the country.

Over the past three years, Eric Adams, the mayor of New York, has allocated more than $ 1 billion to rainwater improvements in the city. However, this amount is much lower than the experts say necessary to update the aging infrastructure of the city for the current climate reality, not even what is expected in the future.

“We have an infrastructure designed for an environment in which we no longer live,” Rohit Aggarwala, New York Times climate director said.

In addition to the growing impact of freshwater floods, the region also has to face a growing threat from the expanding Atlantic Ocean. The city flood resilience plan provides that it will need $ 46 billion to protect itself from a storm over 100 years.

The floods in New Jersey occur while the state plans to sweep changes to extend its flood zones and requires a raising of new properties if they are built in areas likely to flood at least once in the next 100 years.

The research published this month shows that winter storms in the Northeast also become more destructive as sea level increases and that Arctic Sea Ice decreases helps transform weather conditions for more exaggerated and powerful iterations.

The most destructive example of this type of storm was Superstorm Sandy, a hybrid Nor’Aster and a hurricane that filled New York metro tunnels with salt water and caused $ 19 billion in the city.

While global warming continues, it is likely that the floods will get worse. The intensity of precipitation in the northeast could increase by an additional 52% at the end of the century, according to a recent study.

The heavy rains in the northeast of the United States present themselves while several other parts of the country, including the center of Texas, persist one of the most intense flooding seasons of recent memory. According to statistics compiled by meteorologist Michael Lowry, the NWS has issued more flood warnings this year than in any other year which since this type of warning began in 1986. Only Monday, 96 flood warnings were issued – the most for every day in July recorded.

Eric Holthaus is a meteorologist and a climate journalist based in Minnesota