Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Letter
  • Published:

Increasing risk of compound flooding from storm surge and rainfall for major US cities

Nature Climate Change volume 5, pages 1093–1097 (2015)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

When storm surge and heavy precipitation co-occur, the potential for flooding in low-lying coastal areas is often much greater than from either in isolation. Knowing the probability of these compound events and understanding the processes driving them is essential to mitigate the associated high-impact risks1,2. Here we determine the likelihood of joint occurrence of these two phenomena for the contiguous United States (US) and show that the risk of compound flooding is higher for the Atlantic/Gulf coast relative to the Pacific coast. We also provide evidence that the number of compound events has increased significantly over the past century at many of the major coastal cities. Long-term sea-level rise is the main driver for accelerated flooding along the US coastline3,4; however, under otherwise stationary conditions (no trends in individual records), changes in the joint distributions of storm surge and precipitation associated with climate variability and change also augment flood potential. For New York City (NYC)—as an example—the observed increase in compound events is attributed to a shift towards storm surge weather patterns that also favour high precipitation. Our results demonstrate the importance of assessing compound flooding in a non-stationary framework and its linkages to weather and climate.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: Data sets and spatial variability of the dependency between storm surge and precipitation.
Figure 2: Non-stationarity in the dependence between storm surge and precipitation.
Figure 3: Weather patterns associated with the increasing frequency of compound events in NYC.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Seneviratne, S. et al. in Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (eds Field, C. B. et al.) 109–230 (IPCC, Cambridge Univ. Press, 2012).

    Book  Google Scholar 

  2. Leonard, M. et al. A compound event framework for understanding extreme impacts. WIREs Clim. Change 5, 113–128 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Ezer, T. & Atkinson, L. P. Accelerated flooding along the U.S. East Coast: On the impact of sea level rise, tides, storms, the Gulf Stream and NAO. Earth’s Future 2, 362–382 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Sweet, W. V. & Park, J. From the extreme to the mean: Acceleration and tipping points of coastal inundation from sea level rise. Earth’s Future 2, 579–600 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. NOAA’s State of The Coast (NOAA, accessed 2 June 2014); http://stateofthecoast.noaa.gov/population

  6. Coincident Flooding in Queensland: Joint Probability and Dependence Methodologies (Department of Science, Information Technology, Innovation and the Arts, Queensland Government, 2012).

  7. Lian, J. J., Xu, K. & Ma, C. Joint impact of rainfall and tidal level on flood risk in a coastal city with a complex river network: A case study of Fuzhou City, China. Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci. 17, 679–689 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Chen, W.-B. & Liu, W.-C. Modeling flood inundation induced by river flow and storm surges over a river basin. Water 6, 3182–3199 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Van den Hurk, B., van Meijgaard, E., deValk, P., van Heeringen, K.-J. & Goijer, J. Analysis of a compounding surge and precipitation event in the Netherlands. Environ. Res. Lett. 10, 035001 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Svensson, C. & Jones, D. A. Dependence between sea surge, river flow and precipitation in south and west Britain. Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci. 8, 973–992 (2004).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Kew, S. F., Selten, F. M., Lenderink, G. & Hazeleger, W. The simultaneous occurrence of surge and discharge extremes for the Rhine delta. Nature Hazard Earth Sys. 13, 2017–2029 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Zheng, F., Westra, S. & Sisson, S. A. Quantifying the dependence between extreme rainfall and storm surge in the coastal zone. J. Hydrol. 505, 172–187 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Hanson, S. et al. A global ranking of port cities with high exposure to climate extremes. Climatic Change 104, 89–111 (2011).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Joint Archive for Sea Level (JASL) Research Quality Data Set (RQDS) (University of Hawaii Sea Level Center, accessed 17 November 2013); http://uhslc.soest.hawaii.edu/data/download/rq

  15. NOAA Precipitation Data (National Climatic Data Center, accessed 22 January 2014); http://gis.ncdc.noaa.gov/map/viewer/#app=cdo&cfg=cdo&theme=precip&layers=000111

  16. Kendall, M. A new measure of rank correlation. Biometrika 30, 81–89 (1938).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Nelsen, R. B. Lecture Notes in Statistics 2nd edn, Vol. 139 (Springer, 2006).

    Google Scholar 

  18. Grimaldi, S. & Serinaldi, F. Asymmetric copula in multivariate flood frequency analysis. Adv. Water Resour. 29, 1115–1167 (2006).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. De Michele, C. & Salvadori, G. A Generalized Pareto intensity-duration model of storm rainfall exploiting 2-copulas. J. Geophys. Res. 108, 4067 (2003).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Schmidt, R. & Stadmüller, U. Nonparametric estimation of tail dependence. Scand. J. Stat. 33, 307–335 (2006).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Wahl, T. & Chambers, D. P. Evidence for multidecadal variability in US extreme sea level records. J. Geophys. Res. 120, 1527–1544 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Jonkman, S. N., Vrijling, J. K. & Vrouwenvelder, A. C. W. M. Methods for the estimation of loss of life due to floods: A literature review and a proposal for a new method. Nature Hazards 46, 353–389 (2008).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Kojadinovic, I. & Yan, J. Modeling multivariate distributions with continuous margins using the copula R package. J. Stat. Softw. 34, 1–20 (2010).

  24. HURDAT Best Track Data (NOAA Hurricane Research Division of AOML, 2014); http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/hurdat/tracks1949to2011_epa.html

  25. Hall, T. M. & Sobel, A. H. On the impact angle of Hurricane Sandy’s New Jersey landfall. Geophys. Res. Lett. 40, 2312–2315 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  26. Compo, G. P. et al. The twentieth century reanalysis project. Q. J. R. Meteorol. Soc. 137, 1–28 (2011).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Santer, B. D., Wigley, T. M. L. & Jones, P. D. Correlation methods in fingerprint detection studies. Clim. Dynam. 8, 265–276 (1993).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Colle, B. A. et al. New York City’s vulnerability to coastal flooding. Bull. Amer. Meteorol. Soc. 89, 829–841 (2008).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  29. Gräler, B. et al. Multivariate return periods in hydrology: A critical and practical review focusing on synthetic design hydrograph estimation. Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci. 17, 1281–1296 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  30. Kendon, E. J. et al. Heavier summer downpours with climate change revealed by weather forecast resolution model. Nature Clim. Change 4, 570–576 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  31. Pawlowicz, R., Beardsley, B. & Lentz, S. Classical tidal harmonic analysis including error estimates in MATLAB using T_TIDE. Comput. Geosci. 28, 929–937 (2002).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  32. Hamed, K. H. & Rao, A. R. A modified Mann–Kendall trend test for autocorrelated data. J. Hydrol. 204, 182–196 (1998).

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

T.W. was supported by a fellowship within the postdoctoral programme of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). I. D. Haigh assisted in editing the manuscript.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Marine Science, University of South Florida, 140 7th Avenue South, St Petersburg, Florida 33701, USA,

    Thomas Wahl, Steven D. Meyers & Mark E. Luther

  2. Research Centre Siegen, University of Siegen, Weidenauer Str 169, 57076 Siegen, Germany,

    Thomas Wahl & Jens Bender

  3. Civil and Environmental Engineering, Climate Change Institute & Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions, University of Maine, 5711 Boardman Hall Orono, Maine 04469-5711, USA,

    Shaleen Jain

  4. Research Institute for Water and Environment, University of Siegen, Paul-Bonatz Str 9-11, 57076 Siegen, Germany,

    Jens Bender

Authors
  1. Thomas Wahl
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Shaleen Jain
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Jens Bender
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Steven D. Meyers
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Mark E. Luther
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

T.W. conceived the idea of the study, performed the analyses and wrote the paper; J.B. assisted in writing MATLAB code, participated in technical discussions and co-wrote the paper; S.J. provided guidance on selecting the precipitation data, assisted in performing the statistical analyses and co-wrote the paper; S.D.M. and M.E.L. participated in technical discussions at an early stage when the idea for the study evolved and co-wrote the paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Thomas Wahl.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Wahl, T., Jain, S., Bender, J. et al. Increasing risk of compound flooding from storm surge and rainfall for major US cities. Nature Clim Change 5, 1093–1097 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2736

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2736

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing