Talk about a very sobering outlook for coastal communities.
They face an imminent sea level rise  “crisis,” featuring more frequent “Sandy-like inundation disasters in the coming decades along the mid-Atlantic and elsewhere,” according to a new report.
Future scenarios of the arrival of Sandy-level  storms are “concerning, as they imply that events of less and less severity (from less powerful storms) will produce similar impacts,” according to the report by four experts.
Their report – “Hurricane Sandy Inundation Probabilities Today and Tomorrow” – is in a Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society report: “Explaining Extreme Events of 2012 from a Climate Perspective. ”
The overall report says “attribution of extreme events is a challenging science and one that is currently undergoing considerable evolution.”
The report offers 19 analyses by 18 different research groups of 12 extreme events in 2012, including Sandy, high temperatures in the U.S., the record low levels of Arctic sea ice and heavy rain in northern Europe and eastern Australia.
About half the analyses found some evidence that human-caused climate change contributed to an extreme event, although natural fluctuations in weather and climate also played key roles in many of the events, the report says.
Excerpts from the Sandy report, which draws from numerous sources:
– As rebuilding happens, a concern is how sea level rise will alter the likelihood of future events that result in recurring economic losses in an increasingly crowded coastal zone.
– Sandy broke 16 historical storm-tide levels along the East Coast. Though Sandy’s magnitude on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane wind scale was not particularly large, its westward track was very abnormal. Since 1851, nine other hurricanes (Category 1 and 2) have made landfall with similar proximities, but all were heading north-northeastward.
– Sea level rise has increased the chances of “Sandy-level inundation events.” Sandy had a storm tide that would return every 295 years at Sandy Hook, a one-third shorter period than the 435-year return period in 1950.
– A model suggests that from Atlantic City southward, a 1-in-100-year event or beyond in 1950 can now be expected every couple of decades because of sea level rise.
– At Sandy Hook, Sandy-level events would happen about every 20 to 50 years under an “intermediate high” scenario and every two years under the high scenario.
Here’s an image of the 12 extreme events covered in the report: