The hardest part, experts find, is communicating “unquantifiable” uncertainty. Scientists have long struggled to find the best way to present crucial facts about future sea level rise, but are getting better at communicating more clearly, according to an international group of climate scientists, including a leading Rutgers expert. The consequences of improving communications are enormous, the scientists said, as civic …

Sea levels along the U.S. Southeast and Gulf coasts have been rapidly accelerating, reaching record-breaking rates over the past 12 years, according to a new study led by scientists at Tulane University. In the study, published in Nature Communications, researchers said they had detected rates of sea-level rise of about a half an inch per year since 2010. They attribute …

After the North Sea Flood of 1953, it took nearly 45 years to finalize the Delta Works. If we want to protect The Netherlands against sea-level rise, we shouldn’t wait too long. But how much time do we have left? An international team of researchers from Utrecht University, Deltares, and NIOZ, among others, devised a new method to calculate when …

Getting hit with one hurricane is bad enough, but new research from Princeton Engineering shows that back-to-back versions may become common for many areas in coming decades. Driven by a combination of rising sea levels and climate change, destructive hurricanes and tropical storms could become far more likely to hit coastal areas in quick succession, researchers found. In an article …

Multiple MACH members recently collaborated to provide extensive feedback on the draft New York and New Jersey Harbor & Tributaries Focus Area Feasibility Study (HATS). According to the US Army Corps of Engineers: “Coastal storms have severely impacted the North Atlantic Coast of the United States, including the New York-New Jersey Harbor region.  In response to these storms, the US …

A new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change examines the potential cost of unrealized flood risk in the American real estate market, finding that flood zone property prices are overvalued by  US$121–US$237 billion. Authored by researchers from Environmental Defense Fund, First Street Foundation, Resources for the Future, the Federal Reserve, and several academic institutions, the study also examined how unpriced …

More than ten years have passed since Hurricane Sandy exposed New York City to devastating coastal flooding. Several cost-effective flood megaprojects, including levees and storm surge barriers, have been presented to the NY-NJ region to prevent future billion-dollar disasters, but none have moved forward. Researchers studying climate adaptation have put forward theories about why so few cities have built cost-effective …

Training program created in wake of Superstorm Sandy brings graduate students from varied disciplines together to solve real-world climate problems. As a child, Dan Blanco watched low-income neighborhoods in his native Chicago flood during storms while the more affluent enclaves did not. Now, he is pursuing a doctoral degree in atmospheric sciences at Rutgers so he can further explore – …

A recent article posting by the National Science Foundation, highlighting a recent study in Nature Communications, found that burying just 5% of power lines near the roots of the distribution network, could reduce the expected percentage of residents without power after a major hurricane from 18.2% to 11.3%. The results of this work is part of NSF’s Coastlines and People …

Two recent news stories highlighting different important topics related to climate risk were recently published while citing recent publications with ties to MACH. The first article, Future Hurricanes Likely to Pose Much Greater Flood Risk to US East and Gulf Coasts, published by Phys.org, references the work of graduate students Avantika Gori and Dazhi Xi, who are part of Princeton …