By Jillian McKoy, Photo: Screenshot from article, Boston University School of Public Health, October 1, 2022
Despite climate experts’ repeated warnings that extreme rainfall events will likely become more frequent and intense due to human-caused climate change, several US cities in the Northeast were caught off guard by the catastrophic rain that Hurricanes Henri and Ida dumped on the region in August.
Both storms broke rainfall and flooding records in parts of New Jersey, Philadelphia, New York City, and Boston. Ida, in particular, pummeled New York City with more than seven inches of rain and caused NYC to issue its first-ever “flash flood emergency,” reserved for dangerous floods that rise beyond typical flood levels. Floods shut down subway stations, disproportionately affecting communities of color, and the storm turned fatal when people became trapped in their basements.
The hurricane exposed NYC’s aging infrastructure and underscored how many cities remain unprepared to withstand worsening weather events and other impacts of climate change, from wildfires and earthquakes, to air pollution and snowstorms. A recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted that the Earth is warming rapidly and, in ten years, will likely exceed the level of warming that world leaders hoped to prevent.
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