Tropical Storm Ophelia takes on New York

Parts of New York City are underwater as record rains have led to life-threatening flooding. Brooklyn received more than a month’s worth of rain within three hours. By nightfall on Friday 29 September, Queens recorded 7.97 inches of rain–more precipitation than the burrough has received on any day since records began 75 years ago.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul declared a State of Emergency for New York City, Long Island and the Hudson Valley on Friday. Transportation throughout Friday was heavily impacted with all Metro North and ten Brooklyn trains affected, all three of the City’s airports and seven subway lines.

This rain is part of the remnants of Tropical Storm Ophelia. While Ophelia was not necessarily a note-worthy storm at her peak, she carried extensive water with her as she made landfall on the United States’ East Coast. Increased moisture in storms is a fingerprint of the changing climate’s impact on extreme weather patterns. As the atmosphere gets hotter, it is able to hold more moisture–7% for each degree centigrade of additional heating. The warming Arctic is driving a lot of this increased storm potency, as it is contributing to both the warming air and water.

Extreme storms around the world are going to continue to escalate as the climate crisis deepens. The Arctic sea ice extent recently reached its annual minimum, and it is continuing a trend of losing approximately 13% of its ice extent per decade. This rapid loss of ice is turning the Arctic into a region that is accelerating global warming rather than being the world’s refrigerator.

Find out more about the importance of Arctic sea ice HERE.