"It will take tens of billions of dollars to repair the damage wrought by Superstorm Sandy. But scientists who study climate change say repair is not enough. As the climate warms, ice sheets and glaciers will melt, raising the sea level. That means coastal storms will more likely cause flooding."

Years of poor land-use decisions and neglect of emergency preparedness probably made the losses of life and property from superstorm Sandy significantly worse. Similar situations exist in other U.S. coastal areas.

"For more than a century, for good or ill, New Jersey has led the nation in coastal development. Many of the barrier islands along its coast have long been lined by rock jetties, concrete sea walls or other protective armor. Most of its coastal communities have beaches only because engineers periodically replenish them with sand pumped from offshore. Now much of that sand is gone."

"Superstorm Sandy delivered only a glancing blow to Delaware, but it brought new focus on man’s attempts to manage nature, to hold back the sea."

"Every time a storm brings flooding to a large metropolitan area, there are calls to improve the levee systems that are designed to prevent flooding."

"PARIS — The hammer blow dealt to New York by superstorm Sandy should raise the alarm for coastal mega-cities in Asia which are more exposed but less equipped to deal with such threats, experts said on Tuesday."

"More than 20,000 high-temperature records have been broken so far this year in the United States. And the heat is especially bad in cities, which are heating up about twice as fast as the rest of the planet."

"NEW YORK -- Two years before Hurricane Irene created the prospect of a flooding nightmare in New York City, 100 scientists and engineers met to sketch out a bold defense: massive, moveable barriers to shield the city from a storm-stirred sea."

"While many cities around the country grapple with drought and excessive heat this year, city planners in Boston have something else on their minds: the prospect of rising water."

"The Arizona city already logs more days over 100 degrees than any U.S. city, and climate researchers predict Phoenix will grow hotter still in the coming decades. Planners are taking the projections seriously, and are looking for ways to adapt the city and its residents to a hotter, drier reality."

"Work was scarce for architect David Mullican and many Galveston Island builders after hurricane Ike. As damages were assessed, insurance claims disputed and homes were repaired piecemeal, Mullican was out of work for more than a year."

"NEW YORK CITY -- Mayor Michael Bloomberg has given his city one of the most detailed and highly publicized plans to reduce carbon emissions and to adapt to rising sea levels and other risks posed by climate change."

"The mega-cities of Asia will be the toughest test for climate-change policy as a rising middle class begins to consume goods at rates only previously seen in the west."

"Tia Jackson’s family has lived on the same block of Halsey Street in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood for five generations. Kristen Rapp is a newcomer. Jackson is black. Rapp is white. In a part of town where the gentrification process has been grinding along painfully for years, the two might never have met if not for a sign on a fence on a vacant lot, left there by the members of a group called 596 Acres."

"Intense rainfalls are getting bigger and more frequent, causing local governments, engineers and landowners to rethink whether sewer systems and other drainage features are up to their tasks."