If you ask climate scientist Radley Horton, it’s difficult to say that Hurricane Sandy was directly caused by climate change, but he sees strong connections between the two. Horton is a research scientist at The Earth Institute at Columbia University. He says that in New York City, the sea level has gone up about a foot over the past century and that researchers expect that rise to continue and even accelerate.
“Given the higher sea levels in the future, even if storms remain exactly the same, we’re going to get more frequent flooding events, maybe three times as many coastal flood events by the end of the century, just by virtue of having average sea levels be higher,” he tells Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross.
It’s difficult to know whether this year’s rise in ocean temperatures was associated with climate change, but Horton says that Hurricane Sandy moved over unusually warm waters in the North Atlantic. “As the planet continues to warm, we expect ocean temperatures to go up,” says Horton. “All things being equal, that does give a storm like Sandy more energy.”
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