We’ve written extensively about how global warming worsened the impact of Superstorm Sandy.

Now a new article, “Superstorm Sandy: A Series of Unfortunate Events?” (PDF here) connects the dots even more explicitly:

Cornell and Rutgers researchers report in the March issue of Oceanography that the severe loss of summertime Arctic sea ice — attributed to greenhouse warming — appears to enhance Northern Hemisphere jet stream meandering, intensify Arctic air mass invasions toward middle latitudes, and increase the frequency of atmospheric blocking events like the one that steered Hurricane Sandy west into the densely populated New York City area.

Figure 1a. Atmospheric conditions during Hurricane Sandy’s transit along the eastern seaboard of the United States, including the invasion of cold Arctic air into the middle latitudes of North America and the high-pressure blocking pattern in the northwest Atlantic.

The piece notes “there is increasing evidence that the loss of summertime Arctic sea ice due to green- house warming stacks the deck in favor of”:

1. Larger amplitude meanders in the jet stream,
2. More frequent invasions of Arctic air masses into the middle latitudes, and
3. More frequent blocking events of the kind that steered Sandy to the west

Figure 1b. After the convergence of tropical and extra-tropical storm systems, the hybrid Superstorm Sandy made landfall in New Jersey and New York, bringing strong winds, storm surge, and flooding to areas near the coast and blizzard conditions to Appalachia.

So while this does appear to have been the perfect storm, we can, unfortunately, expect many more as we move toward ice-free arctic conditions in the coming years (see “Experts Warn ‘Near Ice-Free Arctic In Summer’ In A Decade If Volume Trends Continue“).

Related Posts:

• How Does Climate Change Make Superstorms Like Sandy More Destructive?
• Yes, Climate Change Contributed To Superstorm Sandy

By Michael Conathan

Next week the Senate is expected to take up and pass the House’s version of a disaster relief package for areas affected by Hurricane Sandy, which passed on January 15. The relief has been a long time coming: It has been nearly three months since the superstorm devastated coastlines from Maryland to Massachusetts.

First, action was stalled by November’s election, and then House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) refused to bring a Senate-passed bill to a vote before the clock ran out on the 112th Congress, prompting highly critical responses even from members of his own party, such as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), and Rep. Peter King (R-NY). Their anger was justified: By comparison, it took Congress just days to send emergency funding to the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina.

But chronology and delays aside, the bill has plenty of flaws in its content as well. In particular, for a package intended to help coastal communities rebuild, it is remarkably light on funding for the federal agency most closely linked to our coastal communities: the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The House disaster relief legislation actually came in two parts—an initial $17 billion outlay, which was then amended by adding a subsequent $33.7 billion package offered by Rep. Rodney Freylinghausen (R-NJ). His initial proposal wasn’t all bad for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It included $476 million for the agency—just a bit less than the $486 million in the Senate-passed bill and the $493 million requested by the Obama administration. But after the House voted on amendments to Freylinghausen’s bill, the agency’s funding fell to just $326 million.

In the wake of a storm that shifted sands and wrecked infrastructure from Maryland to Massachusetts, rebuilding and even reconceiving management of coastal landscapes must be a priority. In fact, about 80 percent of the money the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration requested for Sandy relief was for coastal restoration and land acquisition.

After the Senate passed its bill, which included $150 million for coastal restoration and another $47 million for land acquisition under the Coastal and Estuarine Lands Conservation Program, Rep. Freylinghausen put $150 million into his bill for coastal restoration efforts. But instead of following the lead of the Senate and funneling the money through National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration programs, he eliminated all funding for land acquisition and designated the restoration funding specifically for “regional ocean partnerships”—collaborative coalitions of neighboring states that help coordinate and streamline management of their shared ocean space and resources.

So now, unless the Senate opts to delay the bill’s passage further by amending it and sending it back over to the House, the Sandy relief package that lands on President Obama’s desk will include not a penny for the programs the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration identified as its highest priorities.

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The seat may have been hot, but the questions weren't.

Early this month, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie made headlines when he ripped into his fellow Republicans in the House of Representatives for allowing their political gamesmanship over spending and budgets to torpedo an aid package for Hurricane Sandy. Then last week, Governor Christie did the rounds on five different national television networks to discuss the GOP’s current dysfunction and the destruction the superstorm left throughout his state.

But despite the extensive coverage, there was one issue that was noteworthy for its complete and utter absence. After tracking the five interviews, Salon reporter David Sirota noted that Christie was not asked about climate change once:

Somehow, in interviews with every major national television news organization about an unprecedentedly severe weather event, Christie wasn’t asked about climate change. That’s right, he wasn’t asked about whether Hurricane Sandy changes his views on climate change or whether Hurricane Sandy means we should address climate change more urgently. He wasn’t asked whether homes should be rebuilt in New Jersey’s climate-change-threatened areas. He wasn’t even asked why he didn’t mention climate change in his first state of the state following the hurricane.

Indeed, he wasn’t challenged with a single question about the entire issue. Not one.

As Sirota notes, this latest punt on the issue of climate change is part of a larger media trend. A recent study by Media Matters found that coverage of the topic collapsed on both the Sunday shows and the nightly news after 2009. The nightly news reports have modestly improved since 2010, but remain severely depressed from their 2009 peak. Their more prominent Sunday competitors are still scraping the bottom of the barrel.

Christie himself is self-contradictory on the question of climate change. He’s bluntly stated that “it’s real,” that “human activity plays a role,” that it’s “impacting our state,” and that “it’s time to defer” to the 90 percent of scientists who agree with those assessments. But in May of 2011, Christie pulled New Jersey out of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a multi-state alliance along the northeast and the Atlantic seaboard to set up a regional cap-and-trade system. Like Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman, Christie took the political risk of stating climate change is a problem and humans contribute to it, but then torpedoed actual policy to address those human contributions under pressure from his fellow conservatives and the rise of the Tea Party.

Human-driven global warming raises sea surface temperatures, which in turn drives up the energy of these storms as they form over the ocean. The higher temperatures increase water vapor in the air, leading to 5 to 10 percent more rainfall and an increased risk of flooding. Even the unusual high pressure system that drove Sandy into the northeastern coast rather than back out to sea has been linked to global warming.

In December 2012, 69 percent of New York State residents told a Siena Research Institiutue poll that they blamed climate change for Sandy. And in November of that year, 57 percent of Americans told the National Journal that they thought climate change will make storms like Sandy more likely.

All that, combined with Christie’s politically heterodox, outspoken, and pugnacious nature, his own mercurial record on climate change, his governorship of the state devastated by one of 2012′s most extreme weather events, it’s remarkable that the networks didn’t pose him a single question on the matter. As Sirota observed, “It seems there is now an unspoken rule in television news mandating that the topic of climate change is to be eschewed when at all possible.”

Related Posts:

• Yes, Climate Change Contributed To Superstorm Sandy
• How Does Climate Change Make Superstorms Like Sandy More Destructive?

By Daniel J. Weiss and Jackie Weidman

This afternoon the House of Representatives plans to debate and vote on a multibillion-dollar disaster aid package for Hurricane Sandy victims more than two months after the super storm devastated New Jersey and New York.

To placate conservative Republicans who don’t want to vote for the entire relief package, the aid provision is divided into two parts.  Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers (R-KY) will offer a bare-bones bill that allocates $17 billion in funding mostly to meet immediate needs, including aid for individuals, community disaster relief and emergency transportation funding for affected areas in the two states.

Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-NJ) will offer an amendment to add $33.6 billion to the Rogers bill.  His supplemental package includes money for both immediate disaster relief and future community resilience projects.  The latter programs are an essential investment to prevent or reduce damages from future climate-related extreme weather events. The just-released draft National Climate Assessment predicts that we face ever-worsening extreme weather.  The report – authored by dozens of the country’s top climate experts – concluded that

“Sea level rise, combined with coastal storms, has increased the risk of erosion, storm-surge damage, and flooding for coastal communities, especially along the Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic seaboard, and Alaska.”

Some of the resiliency provisions in Frelinghuysen’s amendment bill will help communities harmed by one of the 25 major extreme weather events that occurred during the last two years. (A full outline can be found here):

• $19.8 billion to rebuild critical infrastructure and fund community development block grants for Sandy-affected areas and other places harmed by extreme weather events between 2011 and 2013
• $4 billion for coastal restoration and sustainability initiatives that would improve flood control systems for storm-damaged areas
• $1.2 billion for storm-damage repairs to national parks and other public lands, as well as water infrastructure upgrades
• $513 million to improve weather forecasting and hurricane predictions, and to support recovery efforts for coastal communities
• $218 million for restoration, flood prevention, and watershed repairs of damaged agriculture lands

Lawmakers proposed over 90 amendments to the bill, but the House Rules Committee voted to keep them most of them off of the House floor.  This included an amendment by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) that would have required the Army Corps of Engineers to consider “projected sea-level rise attributable to human-caused climate change” when assessing coastal flood risks.

One amendment that representatives will vote on is offered by Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA). It would to cut $13 million designated to “accelerate the National Weather Service ground readiness project.” Notably, he sought funds for flood relief in Georgia in 2009.

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by Andy Darrell, via the Environmental Defense Fund

Extreme weather and aging infrastructure came together with a vengeance in Sandy, showing the fragility of the basic systems that sustain this vibrant city and region. Like so many others, my family lost power, heat and water during Superstorm Sandy, and I watched out my window as a giant flash marked the moment that waters crested a 12-foot retaining wall at the 14^th Street ConEd plant.

New Yorkers are all too familiar with the devastation that followed, and the disruption that spread far beyond the water’s reach. As the immediate crises are resolved, our attention is now on the complex challenge of long-term resilience.

One big step: The NYS 2100 Commission, a panel of experts assembled by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo back in November, just two weeks after the storm. EDF CEO Fred Krupp served on the commission, and our energy team prepared extensive recommendations on how to make our energy system more robust, resilient and adaptable. In yesterday’s State of the State address, he talked about the results.

As it turns out, some important solutions were right under our noses.

For example, amid the darkness and devastation, there were dozens of homes, businesses, even whole communities that kept their lights on and the water because they were designed to isolate breakdowns, heal quicker, and work with natural systems rather than against them.

Success stories were located across our region:

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by Mindy Lubber

“Rebuild smarter.” That’s the constant refrain in the wake of Superstorm Sandy, as New York, New Jersey and Connecticut work to repair the devastation to seaside communities, businesses and the infrastructure that ties them together.

Policymakers and thought-leaders at the local, regional and national level are warning that plans to rebuild must take into account the likelihood that more, and stronger, storms like Sandy will hit again – whether on the East Coast, Gulf Coast or West Coast – in the not-too-distant future.

“You don’t have to be a believer in climate change to understand the dangers from extreme weather are already here,” said New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg at a recent press conference. “Whether or not one storm is related to climate change or is not, we have to manage for risks, and we have to be able to better defend ourselves against extreme weather and natural disasters.”

Insurers, who absorbed an estimated $25 billion in losses from Sandy, are sounding the alarm, too.

“We need to figure out how to close this climate resiliency gap,” Zurich Financial Services’s Lindene Patton said, referring to outdated infrastructure ill equipped for higher sea levels and bigger storm surges. “What we have today is a series of physical assets which are becoming less and less appropriate given the changing weather patterns that we face. You don’t want to assume something’s going to last 30 years only to have it blown away in 10.”

Rebuilding smarter means finding ways to keep people, and vital infrastructure, out of harm’s way. It means strengthening power systems with smarter designs to prevent the multi-day outages that left hundreds of thousands in the cold and dark for days following the storm. It means revitalizing the natural systems, such as creating wetlands, which once helped protect our shores from storm surges and flooding.

But it won’t happen quickly. By some estimates, it may take ten years, and tens of billions of dollars, before hard-hit areas like the Jersey Shore start to resemble their pre-Sandy outlines. Additional resiliency measures for thwarting more powerful storms will cost exponentially more. (One example of this: Consolidated Edison says it would cost $40 billion to put its electric lines underground.) One thing is certain: no one jurisdiction can do it alone. Extreme events like superstorms and super-droughts cross all boundaries, political and geographic. And solutions, both the financial costs and necessary policies, must cross those boundaries as well.

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