When we think of the catastrophes produced by climate change, most of us typically think of supercharged hurricanes, massive wildfires and punishing heat waves, but climate change can turn even a simple rainstorm into a shocking disaster.
Much of the New York metropolitan area was treading water on Friday last week, after hours of torrential rain that capped an already wet week. Roughly half the subway lines in one of the world’s busiest metro systems were suspended or delayed. Streets and highways around the city were flooded. The city’s airports, key national hubs, faced massive delays. People had to be rescued from flooded basement apartments.
The rain kept coming down all day and through the night. Ten to 15cm had already fallen as of midday, with 10cm more to come. That would amount to roughly two typical months of rain for the city in just 48 hours. New York Governor Kathy Hochul declared a state of emergency. Parts of New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania were also swamped.
Believe it or not, this was not the result of some major tropical storm such as Hurricane Sandy. In some ways, it was just a routine early fall low-pressure system, but as we saw in Vermont and New York flooding this summer, in a warmer climate, these rainstorms can produce a whole lot more water than you would expect. That is because hotter air holds more moisture.
Both the air and water are as hot as they have been in human history. July was the planet’s hottest month on record, August was the hottest August ever, and last month was the hottest September ever. The weather system hammering New York on Friday last week was slowly trawling the Atlantic, sucking up ocean water — also the hottest on record — and dumping it in buckets on the land.
As we have seen in storm after storm over the years, New York’s infrastructure simply is not built to handle flooding. Commuters have far too many memories of subway stations turning into filthy water parks in a flash. Some New York City councilors criticized the city’s slow reaction to the storm, which suggested the downpour had come as a surprise. In the defense of city officials, the weather forecast merely expected a lot of rain, but climate change gives a whole new meaning to the words “a lot of rain.”
It is long past time for political leaders and citizens alike to prepare differently for such forecasts. Meanwhile, some of the billions of dollars US President Joe Biden and Congress allocated to infrastructure last year must be spent on waterproofing New York and other cities much more thoroughly. From hurricanes to routine fall storms, it is far too easy to bring one of the greatest cities in the world to a wet, grinding halt.
Mark Gongloff is a Bloomberg Opinion editor and columnist covering climate change. He previously worked for Fortune.com, the Huffington Post and the Wall Street Journal. This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
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