Rising hazard of storm-surge flooding

The 2017 Atlantic hurricane season is one for the history books. It has blown a number of records out of the water. Harvey dumped more rain on the United States than any previous hurricane. Irma maintained the highest category 5 longer than any storm anywhere in the world. September 2017 has accumulated the most cyclone energy of any month on record in the Atlantic. Last, but not least, if early estimates of damages hold up, three of the five costliest storms in US history will have occurred this year: Harvey, Irma, and Maria (1⇓–3). The other two are Katrina and Sandy, which flooded New Orleans in 2005 and New York in 2012 (Fig. 1), respectively. A new study in PNAS by Garner et al. (4) tackles a critical and highly topical question: How will coastal flood risk change in the future on a warming Earth? They approach this question in a case study for New York, but most coastal cities in the world will be facing similar issues in the coming decades and, indeed, centuries.