Climate Change May Lessen Chances of Another Hurricane Sandy in US
If there's anything good that will come out of global warming, it's that it will lessen chances of another Hurricane Sandy hitting the Atlantic Coast.
According to a study published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS) on Monday, climate change may help save the East from suffering another superstorm by altering the atmospheric conditions and steering winds that bring hurricanes away from the United States.
"A lot of speculation after Sandy was that its steering winds were some sort of 'new normal' caused by a warming climate," climate scientist Elizabeth Barnes of Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colo. And lead author of the study told USA Today.
The study initially wanted to find out whether winds that steer hurricanes like Sandy will come more or less by 2100. "We wanted to test that idea, and what we have found is that the steering winds actually look less frequent in the next century," Barnes noted.
Hurricane Sandy was the largest ever recorded in the Atlantic. The destructive superstorm which smashed several part of New Jersey and New York in October of last year, left the Jersey Shore boardwalks destroyed and NYC subways flooded. The disaster killed more than 110 people and cost $65 billion in damages.
According to National Geographic News, the global warming caused by human activities like burning fuel - also known as greenhouse gases - could redirect the Atlantic winds and push it to blow directly from west to east, "pushing storms away from the United States."
USA Today notes that the study has concluded that "Future atmospheric conditions are less likely than at present to propel storms westward into the coast."
However, climate model expert Tom Knutson of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, N.J., says that while the study reveals that some factors that led to the superstorm "look less likely in the century ahead", he tells USA Today that it doesn't mean it will not happen again.
"Just because something has 1-in-700 odds doesn't mean you are safe for the next 700 years."