How climate change affects hurricanes

Higher, warmer waters could spell trouble with next storm

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With communities devastated by Hurricane Sandy in 2012 still awaiting state and federal funds to help buttress against the effects another storm of its size, some groups on Long Island continue to fight their battle against what they see as the root: climate change.

The storm, which caused nearly $32 billion in damage to the state, according to Gov. Andrew Cuomo at the time, was boosted by a sea level that has risen by at least a foot since 1900, which the Department of Environmental Conservation attributes to the expansion of warming ocean water.

Longtime activist and retired schoolteacher Morris Kramer, of Atlantic Beach, says that the warming waters are a clear and undeniable fact — one that residents should be “very, very wary about” when it comes to a future storm.

“It’s locked in. There’s no way to cool it down. It’s something we have to face,” he said. “The same size storm from six years ago might now be much stronger and cause much more damage … Sandy was basically not so damaging coastal-wise.”

Kramer supports this dark prediction with ocean temperatures in Nassau County that he says reached the lower 80s over the summer — a phenomenon that he said he hasn’t seen in his lifetime.

According to Kramer, an incoming hurricane could boost temperatures by as much as nine degrees, making for a more devastating event. Hurricanes also use the warm ocean water as energy to power the destructive winds and ocean surges, according to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

“So if you consider a storm coming in our area, it’s pushing water that is now 90 degrees or more, and more damaging. It’s stronger,” Kramer said. “Also, warmer water is lighter than cold water, so it would move faster on a downward slope toward the island. Warmer water also evaporates faster into the atmosphere, so it can make rain much heavier.”

When Sandy hit, Kramer said, the water temperature was only in the 50s.

Meteorologist Kevin Trenbeth, at the Climate Analysis Section of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said in a 2012 article in the journal Climactic Change that while storms like Sandy are not caused by climate change, their strength certainly is.

“Scientists are frequently asked about an event, ‘Is it caused by climate change?’” he said. “In reality, the wrong question is being asked: The question is poorly posed and has no satisfactory answer. The answer is that all weather events are affected by climate change because the environment in which they occur is warmer and moister than it used to be.”

Trenberth said, in another article in The Conversation the same year, that with every degree Celsius that the water temperature goes up, the water-holding of the atmosphere rises seven percent, potentially magnifying rainfall by double.

Recently, a bill that would require New York state to generate at least 50 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030 has been passed by the state assembly, but has not yet been brought to a vote in the senate, which reconvenes on Jan. 6, 2017.

Though short on specific logistics, the bill would create an framework of advisory groups to guide the state toward a series of goals in order to “help put New York on track to minimize the adverse impacts of climate change through a combination of measures to reduce statewide greenhouse gas emissions and improve the resiliency of the state with respect to the impacts and risks of climate change that cannot be avoided.”

Activist groups including the Long Island Progressive Coalition and New York Renews have championed the bill, and say it is likely to pass with strong bipartisan backing if brought up for a vote this session.

According to a recent study by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, it is feasible that the country as a whole could move to 80 percent renewable-generated electricity by 2050.

However, according to DEC officials, sea-level rise caused by climate change is locked in for centuries and is likely to continue, with New York coast levels expected to rise by 18 to 50 inches in less than 100 years. This fact leads Kramer to believe communities need to focus on battening down their proverbial infrastructure hatches before another event “wallops us.”