Compound flood impacts from Hurricane Sandy on New York City in climate-driven storylines

Abstract

High impact events like Hurricane Sandy (2012) significantly affect society and decision-making around weather/climate adaptation. Our understanding of the potential effects of such events is limited to their rare historical occurrences. Climate change might alter these events to an extent that current adaptation responses become insufficient. Furthermore, internal climate variability in the current climate might also lead to slightly different events with possible larger societal impacts. Therefore, exploring high impact events under different conditions becomes important for (future) impact assessment. In this study, we create storylines of Sandy to assess compound coastal flooding on critical infrastructure in New York City under different scenarios, including climate change effects (on the storm and through sea level rise) and internal variability (variations in the storm's intensity and location). We find that 1 m of sea level rise increases average flood volumes by 4.2 times, while maximised precipitation scenarios (internal variability) lead to a 2.5-fold increase in flood volumes. The maximised precipitation scenarios impact inland critical infrastructure assets with low water levels, while sea level rise impacts fewer coastal assets though with high water levels. The diversity in hazards and impacts demonstrates the importance of building a set of relevant scenarios, including those representing the effects of climate change and internal variability. The integration of a modelling framework connecting meteorological conditions to local hazards and impacts provides relevant and accessible information that can directly be integrated into high impact event assessments.