No More Super-storm Sandys

September 2013

Will Another Super-storm Sandy Come Again Soon?

Link: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/352923/description/No_more_Superstorm_Sandys_expected_for_a_long_time

     As last year's Hurricane Sandy is investigated more today, new simulations suggest that the atmospheric conditions that allowed the hurricane to follow its unusual path will become less frequent in the future. Typically, North Atlantic hurricanes travel roughly parallel to the East Coast and make landfall approaching from the south. The October 2012 storm that slammed New Jersey was an unusual occurrence because it took a left turn and approached from the east, hitting New Jersey at a right angle. This "nearly perpendicular angle to the shore intensified its destructive storm surge". 

Hurricane Sandy 2012

     "An analysis published in May found that, under current climate conditions, hurricanes like Sandy that hit New Jersey at a right angle occur on average once every 700 years".

     In order to understand how climate change might change atmospheric patterns and alter that frequency, Elizabeth Barnes, an atmospheric scientist at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, and her team ran simulations of an extreme warming situation where "carbon dioxide emissions quadruple over the 21st century". In agreement with Barnes is Thomas Knutson, a climate scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, N.J., who says the results are “suggestive” that wind conditions favoring Sandy-like storms will decrease.