Climate change made Hurricane Sandy significantly more costly – $8 billion more, study says

In 2012, Hurricane Sandy was about as close to a worst-case scenario storm for the New York, New Jersey and Connecticut area as one could imagine. With a storm surge of 9 feet inundating highly populated areas and valuable real estate, it was the fourth costliest hurricane in U.S. history, causing nearly $63 billion in damage.

Now, in a first-of-its-kind study published in the journal Nature, a team of researchers has quantified just how much more the storm cost due to higher sea levels from human-caused climate change. The study found that the damage increased by $8.1 billion — or 13% of the total cost — compared to what it would have been in a world without climate change. The study also found that climate change led to about 71,000 additional people being impacted by the flooding. "The human impact of climate change is clear and costly," said study co-author Daniel Gilford, a postdoctoral associate at Rutgers University and climate scientist at Climate Central.