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Extreme Precipitation and Flood Risk for New York City post-Ida

Presentation Date
Tuesday, August 6, 2024 at 3:21pm - Tuesday, August 6, 2024 at 3:24pm
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Abstract

The remnants of Hurricane Ida caused major damage and loss of life in the Northeastern United States on September 1st, 2021. Over 40 people died in the storm across the United States, 11 of whom died in flooded basement apartments within New York City. The storm was so catastrophic because the maximum hourly precipitation intensity, recorded as 3.47 inches at Central Park, was unprecedentedly high for the region. We contextualize this storm’s unprecedented nature within the historical record and project its risk in terms of how likely such an event will occur and what will its consequence be in the near- to medium-term future using stationary and nonstationary hazard analyses techniques. We show that there is a multi-fold increase in the expected future risk when non-stationary models conditioned on future temperature projections are used as opposed to stationary models that assume no climate change. Our results can be translated to potential future damage costs to the city by planning for events that would be expected under climate change and reinforce the pressing need for improved urban stormwater management systems that can handle higher intensity rainfall as climate change continues to impact the weather and subsequently, urban cosmos.

Presentation File(s)
Category
Urban
Extremes Events
Funding Program Area(s)