Last week Dr. Stefan Talke, professor of civil and environmental engineering, published a study in the journal Geographical Research Letters in which he and his colleagues combed through nearly 170 years of archival tide records to reconstruct the historical flood risk of the New York City Harbor area.
Their conclusion? The annual probability of storm water overtopping the typical Manhattan seawall today is 20-times more likely to happen due to increasing storm tides and sea-level rise. Storm tide risk is also impacted by a long term climate pattern known as the North Atlantic Oscillation.
This important study received national attention, and is more evidence of Maseeh College's rise as a premier research institution.
Read more about it at National Geographic, NPR, Washington Post, The Oregonian, The Weather Channel, Mashable, Salon, and i09.