Hot, Wet, and Nasty (But Not in a Good Way): Superstorm Sandy and the New York of Tomorrow
They knew to within a few inches how high the water would go. Klaus had been running the numbers ever since they decided to flood-proof the property. When they moved in, the fuse boxes, water heater and boiler went to the top floor. The couple raised the whole structure, a two-and-a-half-story house dating to the 1830s, almost three feet. Unfortunately, that left them only six inches above the FEMA flood zone. Klaus’s research told him this wasn’t high enough, but zoning regulations would not allow him to raise the house any farther. By the time the Jacobs learned about the legal limitation, they had already bought the place. Just like the original Cassandra, Klaus could see the future but not escape it.
With the storm surge only hours away, they lifted the dishwasher onto the counter and took the furniture upstairs. The stove was going to take a beating, but it was too heavy to move. When everything portable was out of harm’s way, Klaus went to bed. Isabella sat on the stairs to the second floor and videoed the floodwaters seeping into their home. For a while, it was as if the place were sinking.
The water had subsided by the time Klaus woke up, and the first floor was streaked and clotted with mud. It was time to get to work.
In December 2012, in response to Sandy, Mayor Bloomberg created the Special Initiative for Rebuilding and Resiliency. The group was tasked with determining how the city should prepare for the effects of the changing climate. As part of the initiative, the members of the New York City Panel on Climate Change (NPCC), who are legally required to address the city administration every three years, reconvened on an emergency basis. Incorporating scientists from various organizations, the panel’s members gathered like King Arthur’s knights or Marvel’s Avengers, only with a greater preponderance of bifocals and twinsets. Klaus Jacob is one of the panel’s members. Modeled on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the New York panel may not be bigger, but it has a claim to be badder than its UN predecessor. With the publication of its 2009 report, the NPCC took the initiative to amend a dramatic oversight in the IPCC’s last set of findings.
“I definitely do not work with the model for rising sea levels that is based on the IPCC forecast from 2007,” says Klaus, “because that had a footnote on it that most people ignore. The footnote said that these are numbers without considering the contribution from accelerated melting of land-based ice in Greenland and Antarctica.” In his German accent, he renders the last word Und-tarctica. He has a voice with a definite edge when it comes to dry understatement: “Well, that’s a big footnote.”
Working out exactly how these giant ice sheets will respond to a hotter climate is devilishly tricky, even for a crack team of scientists recruited by the United Nations. Faced with such a sticky problem, the IPCC opted for a solution favored by generations of high school students: give up. The panel made its calculations as if Greenland and Antarctica didn’t exist, which is a lot of frozen water to wish into oblivion.
In its 2009 report, the NPCC published both the IPCC figures and its own calculations for what it called the Rapid Ice-Melt Scenario (RIMS). Readers tended to be bemused by the two sets of numbers, especially since the RIMS figures approximately doubled the IPCC forecast. That meant a two-foot rise in sea levels come mid-century and as much as five feet by 2100. There was a tendency for readers to assume that the higher set of figures was a worst-case alternative to the more conservative predictions, but this was quite mistaken. The RIMS numbers were merely extrapolated from observed current trends in Greenland and Und-tarctica.
Unfortunately, when it comes to underestimating the effects of climate change, this is not the IPCC’s only offense. Its last report predicted an average increase of between 2 and 11.5 degrees Fahrenheit in global temperatures over the course of this century. But the latest research shows that if carbon emissions continue to grow at the present rate of 3 percent a year, then the planet is already making a beeline for that upper, 11.5-degree extreme. Worst case has become probable case. Global temperatures haven’t gone that high at this speed for 250 million years, when 95 percent of the world’s species went extinct. And the IPCC is a big deal, because in politics the panel’s conclusions are considered the gold standard of climate science. The IPCC’s work will form the basis for any international treaty on the control of greenhouse gas emissions.
Against this regrettable global background, Klaus inspires a little hope on the local stage. He is a research scientist who has the ear of those in power. Unfortunately, there is sometimes a problem with what’s between the ears of power. Klaus’s role in the courts and palaces of city administrators can be a bit like that of Lear’s fool, and it’s an open question whether New Yorkers will grow old before they grow wise. No one listened when Klaus spoke out against the inadequacy of the South Ferry Subway renovations at the World Trade Center site. When Sandy brought the inevitable storm surge, the tunnels were filled to the ceiling. The station will be out of action for years. Klaus continues to be vocal in decrying the design of the new Second Avenue line. The Hanover Square station is in the 100-year flood zone, and the Seaport Station, near Beekman and Pearl streets, will join it there later this century as the East River encroaches into Lower Manhattan. No architectural allowance has been made for these risks. As Klaus has pointed out, inexpensive solutions are available. For example, New York could learn from the Bangkok Metro, where station entrances have been raised a yard above ground and commuters walk skyward before heading underground.
Even Klaus’s employer, Columbia University, has declined to act on his warnings. At present, Columbia is developing its 17-acre Manhattanville Campus on a low-lying area between 125th and 131st streets in West Harlem. When Klaus first saw the plans back in 2004, the area wasn’t officially in a flood zone, and he worked hard to deprive the administration of the false comfort that provided. Post-Sandy, the redrawn maps confirm his predictions.
“Fast forward 50 or 100 years,” says Klaus, “and we have a sea level two to four feet higher, and we have a Sandy of the same kind, then you would have four feet of water flooding the underground campus. It’ll cost a billion dollars. In 100 years from now it may have trouble maintaining functionality.”
How could Columbia approve such an apparently reckless plan?
“If I could be rude about it,” he says, “I’d say the president wanted work to get started and a few buildings to go up while it’s still on his watch.” His eyes crinkling, he adds, “I thought that you could argue with educated people on a more rational basis.”
The kind of engineering adaptations Klaus champions are often classified under the heading “risk management”—one of his fields of interest, according to Columbia’s website. In this context, it is a deceptive term. It brings to mind insurance policies and contingency planning. It suggests that, with a bit of luck, we all might get off scot-free. But the rise of the world’s oceans is insistent to the point of bad taste. Were carbon emissions to drop to zero tomorrow, we would still be facing hundreds of years of rising temperatures and vanishing coastlines. The sea level around New York may well not rise five feet come 2100, but it will hit that five-foot mark eventually. Perhaps it’ll take until 2120. But the water is coming, and it won’t stop once it reaches a five- or six-foot notch. In other words, preparing for the deluge is a rock-solid investment for the city; the only question is how long it takes to see the dividends.
Warmer seas and an atmosphere charged with more moisture will probably lead to more severe storms, too. At present, the NPCC calculates there is a greater than 50 percent chance that the North Atlantic will see an increased frequency in the number of intense hurricanes come mid-century. But even if the storms don’t become more powerful, they will be more damaging. A two-foot rise in sea level is a two-foot bonus to any storm surge hitting the city. In 1821, a hurricane resulted in a 10-foot surge that flooded lower Manhattan as far as Canal Street. The surge was 10 feet high with Hurricane Donna in 1960. Both storms would be more dramatic were they to occur now, and the potential for flooding will only grow. In the future, without the right precautions, it will not take a rare Sandy-strength storm to produce Sandy-style effects.
“Sandy was in the order of a 500-year storm as far as flooding was concerned,” says Klaus. “It was a 1-in-30 year storm as far as precipitation was concerned. It was a 500-year storm in terms of its dimensions—how far it stretched along the coast. There are many different metrics you can use. But since we are mostly concerned with flooding, here are some simple statistics. Take the so-called RIMS model. If we apply those estimates, then what was in 2000 a 100-year flood height can be achieved in 2085 with a two-year storm. That’s a fiftyfold increase.”
And what about the scientists who anticipate more frequent, stronger storms? “That is an additional component that I haven’t taken into account.” Klaus is adamant as to what he wants from the city administration: “Not freezing in more risk for the future. That’s my bottom line.”