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Aftermath of superstorm Sandy shows how world must change
Logan Mock-Bunting/Aurora Photos/Corbis
NEWS FOCUS / CHANGING COASTLINES
ADAPT TO SURVIVE As climate change kicks in, superstorm Sandy has lessons for how the rest of the world will need to adapt Hal Hodson, Union Beach
PYRAMIDS of rubble still dominate the streets of Union Beach, New Jersey. Boats are parked in odd places, while a layer of glass and grit makes the sidewalks crunch. Down by the water everything is quiet. You can see Manhattan across the bay, framed by the skeletons of dwellings devoured by one of the most powerful storms ever to hit the US east coast. Superstorm Sandy killed more than 6 | NewScientist | 5 January 2013
100 people last October, destroyed tens of thousands of homes and stranded millions without power or heat. The first response, the clean-up, is nearing completion. The next phase, reconstruction, has just begun. As it gets under way, low-lying coastal metropolises around the world will be watching, preparing for what must now be inevitable for all of them. But is simply rebuilding on vulnerable land the right response? The rebuild “will probably be pretty
fast and furious”, says Edward Blakely, the urban planner who led the recovery of New Orleans after hurricane Katrina in 2005. But the stronger storms that are likely to accompany climate change mean rebuilding is an increasingly dangerous strategy. Architects and climate scientists know that ideally people should not rebuild but instead move to safer ground. “Sometimes we need to be educated about when not to build,” architect Jim Dart told a meeting of
The Jersey Shore will be rebuilt, but how long before the next big storm?
In this section n Stem cells from the dead, page 9 n Harvesting quantum dots from worms, page 10 n Polar robots take to the ice, page 16
In deeper water Post-Sandy calculations show that one storm every 100 years will cover vulnerable areas in up to 6 metres of water. That’s 1 metre deeper than calculations made 20 years ago NEWARK
AT TA N
NEW JERSEY
NEW YO R K
STATEN ISLAND
Areas liable to flood No available data
1 km
UNION BEACH
SOURCE: FEMA
Parts of the Jersey Shore came through Sandy relatively unscathed and pilings were “the number one saviour”, according to Dan Governale, an architect with Barlo and Associates Architects. He demonstrates this with photos of one client’s house, which was put on pilings four years ago as a precaution. Perhaps living up to its name, the storm flushed out the sand underneath, but the house remained, suspended high above the ground. The desirability of beachfront life means there’s no question that the Jersey Shore won’t be redeveloped, Governale says. What’s worrying is that less wealthy, long-time residents may get pushed out, unable to pay for a rebuild, while richer folks move in. “As an architect, I can build a house that can weather a storm like that, but at what cost?” Most houses won’t be rebuilt to storm-proof standards, as people rush to resume normal life. And anyway, “sea level rise means that even if you raise your building four or six feet, it may not be enough to handle the new surges,” Blakely says. In the wake of the storm, the Federal Emergency Management Agency rushed out updated floodplain data for the first time in 20 years. While only advisory and not carrying any legal weight over insurance premiums, it shows that 100-year floodplains – high water levels that FEMA expects once in 100 years – are now 1 metre higher in New Jersey and New York than they were in the 1990s (see map, right). While the update is better than nothing, there’s one glaring omission. It does not take climate change into account. This means sea level rises and stronger storms do not figure in FEMA’s
NH
Storm-proofing
advice to New Jersey and New York. “The chances of a large storm in a warmer world increase,” says Ken Miller, a climate scientist at Rutgers University in New Jersey. “In certain areas, you’re going to have to leave.” It’s not just the residents and authorities of the east coast that are facing tough choices. Over on the Pacific coasts of California, Oregon and Washington, people don’t often have to “Sometimes we need to be deal with superstorms. They do, educated however, have their own ocean threat about when to contend with: El Niño. This is a shift not to build. in the Pacific climate that occurs every When do you five years or so, during which the currents and winds that normally push move uphill?” water away from the coast get switched off, causing the sea to rise temporarily. Just how these circulation patterns will change in a warming world is still unknown. “During the last major El Niño in 1997 and 1998, the mean water level went up by 30 or 40 centimetres,” says Peter Ruggiero, a geoscientist at Oregon State University. The rapid rise makes
MA
his colleagues at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark. “When do you move uphill?” For those who want to stay, and who live on the floodplain, the most basic option is to elevate their houses on pilings – thick beams pounded vertically into the ground. It’s an expensive process, costing between $30,000 and $50,000 depending on the size of the building to be lifted.
the coast more susceptible to strong tides, fierce waves and storm surges. Hayward City, nestled in San Francisco Bay, initially began looking at strategies for adapting to climate change with a view to preserving its investment. It is returning 6000 hectares of salt flats to marshland, the land’s natural state. The marshes are an important ecological resource, home to shorebirds, ducks and fish, but they also play an important role during flooding, says Jeremy Lowe, a geomorphologist at environmental consultancy ESA PWA. They spread and contain water over a wide area, so less of it rushes inland. Lowe is under no illusion that marshes and wetlands can hold back the sea forever, but neither is he in favour of large-scale engineering projects such as building a barrier across the Golden Gate Bridge. “You would kill the marshes,” he says. Instead, Lowe suggests that humans should leave the riskiest areas: “moving stuff out of the hazard zone would be the best adaptation,” he says. Unsurprisingly, that’s unlikely to happen anytime soon, so expanding the marshes seems like a sensible intermediate step. But the project has run into problems with the Endangered Species Act – the flats are the preferred home of the snowy plover, a federally protected bird. Legal barriers like this are one of the main challenges faced when adapting to climate change, says Susi Moser of Stanford University in California, who is an environmental consultant. “Just try moving Manhattan,” she says. “Try moving that port infrastructure, which is the heart and lifeline for many communities that aren’t even on the coast. Laws have to be opened up and rewritten to enable this sort of thinking.” Lowe says he expects that hazard zones won’t be vacated through government regulation, but when insurers and investors can no longer stomach the risks. “There’s also the cost of industrial operations,” he says. “If you’re running a business and it gets interrupted every 10 years by a flood, it impacts your operation, but you can recover. But what if that flood starts happening every five years, every two?” n 5 January 2013 | NewScientist | 7
NEWS FOCUS / CHANGING COASTLINES
ADAPT TO SURVIVE As climate change kicks in, superstorm Sandy has lessons for how the rest of the world will need to adapt Hal Hodson, Union Beach
PYRAMIDS of rubble still dominate the streets of Union Beach, New Jersey. Boats are parked in odd places, while a layer of glass and grit makes the sidewalks crunch. Down by the water everything is quiet. You can see Manhattan across the bay, framed by the skeletons of dwellings devoured by one of the most powerful storms ever to hit the US east coast. Superstorm Sandy killed more than 6 | NewScientist | 5 January 2013
100 people last October, destroyed tens of thousands of homes and stranded millions without power or heat. The first response, the clean-up, is nearing completion. The next phase, reconstruction, has just begun. As it gets under way, low-lying coastal metropolises around the world will be watching, preparing for what must now be inevitable for all of them. But is simply rebuilding on vulnerable land the right response? The rebuild “will probably be pretty
fast and furious”, says Edward Blakely, the urban planner who led the recovery of New Orleans after hurricane Katrina in 2005. But the stronger storms that are likely to accompany climate change mean rebuilding is an increasingly dangerous strategy. Architects and climate scientists know that ideally people should not rebuild but instead move to safer ground. “Sometimes we need to be educated about when not to build,” architect Jim Dart told a meeting of
The Jersey Shore will be rebuilt, but how long before the next big storm?
In this section n Stem cells from the dead, page 9 n Harvesting quantum dots from worms, page 10 n Polar robots take to the ice, page 16
In deeper water Post-Sandy calculations show that one storm every 100 years will cover vulnerable areas in up to 6 metres of water. That’s 1 metre deeper than calculations made 20 years ago NEWARK
AT TA N
NEW JERSEY
NEW YO R K
STATEN ISLAND
Areas liable to flood No available data
1 km
UNION BEACH
SOURCE: FEMA
Parts of the Jersey Shore came through Sandy relatively unscathed and pilings were “the number one saviour”, according to Dan Governale, an architect with Barlo and Associates Architects. He demonstrates this with photos of one client’s house, which was put on pilings four years ago as a precaution. Perhaps living up to its name, the storm flushed out the sand underneath, but the house remained, suspended high above the ground. The desirability of beachfront life means there’s no question that the Jersey Shore won’t be redeveloped, Governale says. What’s worrying is that less wealthy, long-time residents may get pushed out, unable to pay for a rebuild, while richer folks move in. “As an architect, I can build a house that can weather a storm like that, but at what cost?” Most houses won’t be rebuilt to storm-proof standards, as people rush to resume normal life. And anyway, “sea level rise means that even if you raise your building four or six feet, it may not be enough to handle the new surges,” Blakely says. In the wake of the storm, the Federal Emergency Management Agency rushed out updated floodplain data for the first time in 20 years. While only advisory and not carrying any legal weight over insurance premiums, it shows that 100-year floodplains – high water levels that FEMA expects once in 100 years – are now 1 metre higher in New Jersey and New York than they were in the 1990s (see map, right). While the update is better than nothing, there’s one glaring omission. It does not take climate change into account. This means sea level rises and stronger storms do not figure in FEMA’s
NH
Storm-proofing
advice to New Jersey and New York. “The chances of a large storm in a warmer world increase,” says Ken Miller, a climate scientist at Rutgers University in New Jersey. “In certain areas, you’re going to have to leave.” It’s not just the residents and authorities of the east coast that are facing tough choices. Over on the Pacific coasts of California, Oregon and Washington, people don’t often have to “Sometimes we need to be deal with superstorms. They do, educated however, have their own ocean threat about when to contend with: El Niño. This is a shift not to build. in the Pacific climate that occurs every When do you five years or so, during which the currents and winds that normally push move uphill?” water away from the coast get switched off, causing the sea to rise temporarily. Just how these circulation patterns will change in a warming world is still unknown. “During the last major El Niño in 1997 and 1998, the mean water level went up by 30 or 40 centimetres,” says Peter Ruggiero, a geoscientist at Oregon State University. The rapid rise makes
MA
his colleagues at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark. “When do you move uphill?” For those who want to stay, and who live on the floodplain, the most basic option is to elevate their houses on pilings – thick beams pounded vertically into the ground. It’s an expensive process, costing between $30,000 and $50,000 depending on the size of the building to be lifted.
the coast more susceptible to strong tides, fierce waves and storm surges. Hayward City, nestled in San Francisco Bay, initially began looking at strategies for adapting to climate change with a view to preserving its investment. It is returning 6000 hectares of salt flats to marshland, the land’s natural state. The marshes are an important ecological resource, home to shorebirds, ducks and fish, but they also play an important role during flooding, says Jeremy Lowe, a geomorphologist at environmental consultancy ESA PWA. They spread and contain water over a wide area, so less of it rushes inland. Lowe is under no illusion that marshes and wetlands can hold back the sea forever, but neither is he in favour of large-scale engineering projects such as building a barrier across the Golden Gate Bridge. “You would kill the marshes,” he says. Instead, Lowe suggests that humans should leave the riskiest areas: “moving stuff out of the hazard zone would be the best adaptation,” he says. Unsurprisingly, that’s unlikely to happen anytime soon, so expanding the marshes seems like a sensible intermediate step. But the project has run into problems with the Endangered Species Act – the flats are the preferred home of the snowy plover, a federally protected bird. Legal barriers like this are one of the main challenges faced when adapting to climate change, says Susi Moser of Stanford University in California, who is an environmental consultant. “Just try moving Manhattan,” she says. “Try moving that port infrastructure, which is the heart and lifeline for many communities that aren’t even on the coast. Laws have to be opened up and rewritten to enable this sort of thinking.” Lowe says he expects that hazard zones won’t be vacated through government regulation, but when insurers and investors can no longer stomach the risks. “There’s also the cost of industrial operations,” he says. “If you’re running a business and it gets interrupted every 10 years by a flood, it impacts your operation, but you can recover. But what if that flood starts happening every five years, every two?” n 5 January 2013 | NewScientist | 7