Tempest in a laptop
March 1, 2021 9 a.m.
Ning Lin
Photo illustration by John Opet, art270; portrait by David Kelly Crow
Ning Lin denies she predicted Hurricane Sandy, the massive storm that made landfall in New York City in October 2012, causing widespread coastal flooding and wind damage.
“When people say that, I correct them,” Lin said. “I don’t predict specific events, I predict probabilities. The probability of New York City being hit by strong storms and flooding was higher than most people expected.”
But the timing was uncanny. Just months earlier, while a postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Lin co-authored a study projecting that climate change would drive significant coastal flooding on a frequency of once a decade rather than once a century. New York City, the authors said, was highly vulnerable.