Rare Floods to Become the Norm If Emissions Aren’t Cut

U.S. coastal areas are set to be deluged by far more frequent and severe flooding events if greenhouse gas emissions aren’t slashed, with rare floods becoming the norm for places such as New York City, Seattle and San Diego, new research has found.

The study, undertaken by researchers from Princeton and Rutgers universities, found that along all of the U.S. coastline, the average risk of a 100-year flood will increase 40-fold by 2050.

Such floods are statistically expected to occur only once every 100 years because of their severity, although this doesn’t mean these sort of floods never happen in consecutive years. The annual chance of such a flood is around 1 percent.

http://www.climatecentral.org/news/rare-us-floods-to-become-the-norm-21525

Carsten ten Brink

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