A Wonderful Town. An excerpt from 2084.

Dr. Vivien Rosenzweig is Director of the Columbia University Center for Climate Systems Research, located in Poughkeepsie. I spoke with her via satellite telephone.

New York City was vulnerable to the effects of global warming for two reasons. First, like many cities, New York’s public facilities had wound up on land that no one wanted to buy and that was therefore available at low cost. Much of New York’s transportation system and sewage and water treatment facilities, for example, were on land that was only a few meters above sea level. Many of the subway lines were below sea level. The three airports had elevations of only 2-6 meters (6-20 feet), as anyone who flew into La Guardia airport before it shut down could not help but notice. When a big storm rode in on top of the higher seas that global warming caused, as was bound to happen, these low-lying but vital public operations would be the first to fail.

The second vulnerability was that New York lay in the path of storms from two different directions: hurricanes moving up from the south and nor’easter’s moving down from New England. The nor’easters have lower wind speed, but they often stay around longer and that gives their floodwaters time to reach farther into city streets and buildings.

Let me review some history. One of the first large recorded storms struck New York in 1821. The eye made a direct hit on the city and in one hour threw up a storm surge of 4 m (13 feet), flooding Lower Manhattan as far north as Canal Street. Fortunately, the smaller population of that time prevented a large death toll. In 1893, a storm destroyed Hog Island off the southern coast of Long Island. The great storm of 1938, known as the Long Island Express, lifted a wall of water 10 meters (33 feet) high and killed 700 people. Then in September 1960, Hurricane Donna, a Category 3 storm, raised a surge of over 2.5 meters (8 feet). Donna flooded lower Manhattan almost to waist level at what would become site of the World Trade Towers. Airports cut back service and subways and highways closed. In December 1992, a nor’easter hit with winds of 90 miles an hour and tide waters 2.5 meters (8 feet) above normal, causing some of the worst flooding in New York’s history. In September 1999, Hurricane Floyd, a Category 2 storm, dumped up to 16 inches of rain in 24 hours. Fortunately, Floyd arrived at low tide and was already weakening, so it did not produce a big storm surge.

Thus in the twentieth century, four large storms, as well many smaller ones that I have not named, struck New York. As the twenty-first century progressed, because the oceans had warmed, hurricane intensity increased. By 2040, average intensity had risen by half a category: what would have been a Category 3 storm in 2000 was by 2030 likely to be a Category 3.5. By 2060 average intensity had risen by a point: what had been a Category 3 with maximum winds of 130 mph was now likely to be a Category 4, with maximum winds of 155 mph. Another way to put it is to say that a Category 4 storm was more likely than it had been in the twentieth century.
As sea level and storm intensity rose and floodwaters and storm surges reached farther into the city, the 100 year flood became the 50 year flood, then the 25 year flood, and now the 10 year flood. It is hard to live and conduct business knowing that a big flood is 10 times as likely as it used to be.

The big storm of 2025 resembled the 1992 nor’easter in that it moved more quickly into the New York area than had been forecast, but once it got there, stalled and poured rain for days. The timing could not have been worse: the storm came in on a full moon and remained for four flood tides. It shorted out the entire New York City subway system and left people stranded on trains and in stations. Some of the subways in lower Manhattan flooded to the ceiling. To remove the salt water and replace shorted and corroded electrical equipment and get the subways operating took weeks. The PATH transportation link between New York City and New Jersey had to be shut down for two weeks. The runways at LaGuardia Airport were under a foot of salt water which took many days to drain. Two meters of water (6.6 feet) covered FDR drive and many other streets and roads in lower Manhattan were flooded. The storm destroyed Fire Island as well as other low-lying islands, plus many homes in Westhampton and adjoining parts of Long Island. The floodwaters split lower Manhattan into two islands roughly divided at Canal Street. For more than a week before the water receded, people could reach Wall Street and the rest of the financial district only by boat. The 1992 nor’easter had caused damages estimated at $2 billion. In 1992 dollars, the storm of 2025 cost $15 billion. But it proved to be only a warning shot.

The big nor’easter prompted New York City officials to send teams to study the Dutch dikes and sea gates—this was more than two decades before the Maesland gates collapsed and let in the water that destroyed Rotterdam. New York began to erect storm surge barriers at three critical points: at the mouth of the Arthur Kill between Staten Island and New Jersey; in the Narrows at the entrance to New York Harbor; and across the upper East River just above LaGuardia Airport. The three barriers would seal off Manhattan, Staten Island, the New Jersey peninsula, and the inland sections of Brooklyn and Queens. But the plan left the south shore of Long Island, the Rockaways, Brighton Beach, and JFK Airport unprotected.

Every region vulnerable to a natural disaster—a flood, a storm, an earthquake, a drought—has its extreme event, one that does more damage in a brief time than decades of average events. In New Orleans, the Big One was a Category 4 storm that made anything close to a direct hit on the city. That was confirmed by the hurricane known as 2048-9, a Category 4 that made landfall just east of Atchafalaya Bay and continued on a northeasterly course, the eye passing 15 miles west of the center of New Orleans. (By this time, there were so many storms that it had become impractical to name them after people, hence the switch to numbering them by year and month.) Driven by 155 mph winds, the storm waters surged inland to the edge of the city and in some cases, into it. Most of the supposedly stronger levees failed and many districts flooded. Lake Pontchartrain overflowed its western edge and spilled south into the downtown area. Within 24 hours, the heart of New Orleans was under at least 7 meters (23 feet) of water and the city had to be abandoned.

In the Northern Hemisphere, hurricanes have a counterclockwise motion, causing their most destructive winds to lie to the right of the eye. The particular arrangement of sea and land near New York City makes the potential damage from a large hurricane even larger as these counterclockwise westerly winds funnel water through the sharp bend between New Jersey and Long Island and directly into New York Harbor.

By the time the big storm struck in August 2042, the combined effect of the global rise in sea level and tectonic subsidence in the New York area had made sea level effectively 60 cm (2 feet) higher than it had been in 2000. The Category 3 storm traveled north over the Atlantic just off the Jersey Shore, then, as it neared the city, unexpectedly veered a few degrees to the west, right onto the worst-case track. To this point, the storm had traveled over water and avoided the slowing effect of travel over land. The storm made landfall at Asbury Park and from there continued north and slightly west over Perth Amboy, Elizabeth, Newark, and Paterson.

The sea barriers between Staten Island and New Jersey, as well as the one across the upper East River above LaGuardia, were still under construction; within hours they collapsed. The barrier at the mouth of New York Harbor by then had been operating successfully for two years. But after 24 hours of continual pummeling by 125 mph winds and 15 meter (50 foot) storm surges, the gate collapsed. A huge surge of water rushed into Upper New York Bay, attacked the base of the Statue of Liberty and washed over Ellis and Governor’s Island, wiping them out. The big waves continued to erode the footing of the Statue, until finally one giant wave toppled her. There she still lies, on her side, torch extinguished beneath a sea higher than her builders could have imagined.

Sadly, just as officials in New Orleans believed that the levees would protect the city, as the Dutch believed that the Maesland Sea Gate would protect Rotterdam, so New York City officials had believed that the barriers would protect the harbor and city. They took no additional measures such as construction of seawalls.

The storm surge from 2042-8 destroyed not only the islands in the Bay, but major parts of the city. A 7 meter (35 foot) surge drowned LaGuardia Airport. At JFK airport, the water rose 10 meters (33 feet), leaving the airport in ruins. Water flooded the Lincoln Tunnel to its ceiling, drowning hundreds of people in their cars. Huge waves crashed over the Battery and surged into the financial district, flooding the lower meter or two of every building there.

The storm not only left large swaths of Manhattan under water, it flooded The Rockaways, Coney Island, much of southern Brooklyn and Queens, portions of Long Island City, Astoria, Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, and eastern Staten Island from Great Kills Harbor north to the Verrazano Bridge. The entire transportation system failed. Power went out almost immediately throughout the city and took months to restore. People tried to get out of the city by car and on foot and many died. The scene on George Washington Bridge resembled that at the World Trade Tower disaster, with bodies falling through the air. Looting was rampant. Police and medical facilities were overwhelmed. New York became something close to an open city and it took nearly a year to bring it back under the rule of law.

Remember that the attacks on the World Trade Towers on September 11, 2001, even considering the effects of smoke and dust, directly affected only a small part of the city. The storm of 2042 wreaked havoc in a vastly larger area and brought the entire city of New York and its surrounding area to a halt. Many companies and organizations saw no future on the Island of Manhattan and if they were able, relocated to higher elevations inland, as my center has had to do.