Collaborative study finds increasing potential of compound flooding, media report
Business Insider, Science, Climate Central, The Verge, The Conversation and Coastal Review Online reported on a new study of the United States coastline that found the confluence of storm surges and heavy precipitation can bring dangerous flooding to low-lying coastal regions, including major metropolitan areas. The research team was led by Thomas Wahl, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of South Florida and University of Siegen, Germany, and involved four other researchers, including Shaleen Jain, a University of Maine associate professor of civil engineering. The team found the risk of such flooding is higher on the Atlantic coast than the Pacific, and the number of these compound events has increased significantly in many major cities in the past century. Their findings were published in the journal Nature Climate Change. Jain and Wahl wrote a guest post for The Carbon Brief about the study, titled “How storm surges and heavy rainfall drive coastal flood risks in the US.” Bloomberg Business published an article on the study and New York’s increased chance of flooding, and Phys.org carried the University of South Florida release on the study.