About

Ning Lin is a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Princeton University and serves as the Director of Graduate Studies. Her educational background includes a PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Princeton University, an MS from Texas Tech University, and a BS from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in China. Her research areas encompass Natural Hazards and Risk Analysis, Wind Engineering, Coastal Engineering, and Climate Change Impact and Adaptation, with a primary focus on hurricane risk analysis. Dr. Lin integrates science, engineering, and policy to study hurricane-related weather extremes such as strong winds, heavy rainfall, and storm surges, examining how these hazards change with a changing climate and how their societal impacts can be mitigated. She has led significant projects including an NSF CAREER award and a multi-institutional NSF Hazards SEEs project on hurricane hazards and risk in a changing climate. Her contributions have been recognized through numerous awards, including the NSF CAREER Award, the Howard B. Wentz, Jr. Junior Faculty Award at Princeton, and the Huber Prize for research on hurricane risks and coastal infrastructure.

Research topics

• Climatology
• Meteorology
• Environmental science
• Geography
• Geology
• Oceanography
• Atmospheric sciences
• Cartography

Selected publications

• Tropical cyclone rainfall extends inland

  Nature Communications · 2026-03-14

  articleOpen access

  Tropical cyclone (TC) rainfall, which is typically more intense over the ocean, has increasingly caused devastating floods in coastal regions in recent decades. Regions beyond 100 km inland from coastlines often lack adequate preparedness for TC-induced flooding, underscoring the need to assess whether global shifts in terrestrial TC rainfall, particularly heavy rainfall, have occurred. Here, we show that TC rainfall has extended inland globally from 1980 to 2023. Specifically, along the continental coasts of the Northern Hemisphere, the landward extent of TC heavy rainfall (≥30 mm per 3 h) has increased at a rate of 3.8 ± 1.8 km per decade (95% CI). Notably, the statistical significance of this global trend is robust, regardless of spatial constraints on TC rainfall or the trajectories of coastal TCs. Observations and model simulations suggest that nearshore sea-surface temperature (SST) warming is closely linked to this landward extension, likely by amplifying the land–ocean contrast in terms of friction-related dynamical responses. Coastal urbanization may further enhance this extension when coupled with SST warming. As coastal cities continue to extend inland, the landward extension of TC heavy rainfall could exacerbate inland population exposure and potential flood risk. This study shows that tropical cyclone heavy rainfall has extended inland along the coasts of the Northern Hemisphere with a rate of 3.8 km per decade since 1980. Nearshore sea-surface warming drives this expansion, with coastal urbanization further amplifying the effect. These findings highlight increasing flood risk for inland populations as cities grow.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Tropical cyclones and storm surge

  Elsevier eBooks · 2025-01-01

  book-chapterSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Hurricane Ida’s blackout-heatwave compound risk in a changing climate

  Nature Communications · 2025-05-15 · 14 citations

  articleOpen access

  The emerging tropical cyclone (TC)-blackout-heatwave compound risk under climate change is not well understood. In this study, we employ projections of TCs, sea level rise, and heatwaves, in conjunction with power system resilience modeling, to evaluate historical and future TC-blackout-heatwave compound risk in Louisiana, US. We find that the return period for a compound event comparable to Hurricane Ida (2021), with approximately 35 million customer hours of simultaneous power outage and heatwave exposure in Louisiana, is around 278 years in the historical climate of 1980–2005. Under the SSP5-8.5 emissions scenario, this return period is projected to decrease to 16.2 years by 2070–2100, a ~17 times reduction. Under the SSP2-4.5 scenario, it decreases to 23.1 years, representing a ~12 times reduction. Heatwave intensification is the primary driver of this increased risk, reducing the return period by approximately 5 times under SSP5-8.5 and 3 times under SSP2-4.5. Increased TC activity is the second driver, reducing the return period by 40% and 34% under the respective scenarios. These findings enhance our understanding of compound climate hazards and inform climate adaptation strategies. Employing climate projections and power system modeling, the study finds that the return period for a hurricane-blackout-heatwave compound event comparable to Hurricane Ida (2021) will decrease by ~12–17 times by the end of the century due to heatwave and hurricane intensification.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Assessing Future Coastal Flood Hazards from Tropical Cyclones in the Northeastern United States

  2025-02-12

  preprintOpen access

  Coastal flooding from tropical cyclones (TCs) is among the most devastating natural hazards in the U.S., with storm surges often causing the greatest damage. Accurately quantifying storm surge flood hazards is crucial for risk mitigation and climate adaptation. In this study, we conduct climatology-hydrodynamic modeling to quantify TC storm surge flood hazards along the northeast U.S. coastline under future climate scenarios. Using this methodology, we generate a large set of synthetic TCs for the northeastern U.S. to drive a hydrodynamic model (ADCIRC) and simulate coastal storm surges. Observing that the landfall angle of TCs significantly impacts storm surge, for the first time, we bias-correct landfall angles of synthetic TCs, in addition to their frequency and intensity, using historical data for TC hazard assessment. Our findings show that under the combined effects of sea level rise (SLR) and TC climatology changes, current 100-year flood levels would occur annually at the end of the century in both SSP2-4.5 and SSP5-8.5 scenarios. Additionally, 500-year flood levels are projected to occur every 1-60 years under SSP2-4.5 and 1-20 years under SSP5-8.5. We also project Hurricane Sandy’s return period for New York City to decrease from 964 years to 269 (133) years under SSP2-4.5 (SSP5-8.5) by the end of the century. In higher latitudes (above $40.5^\circ$), TC climatology changes modestly affect flood levels (under 10\% for 100-year and 40\% for 500-year floods), while in lower latitudes, the impact is more significant (up to 40\% for 100-year and 55\% for 500-year floods)

  PublisherDOI

• Mapping Compound Hazard Potential of Tropical Cyclone and Anomalous Heat in Eastern Coast of India

  2025-03-14

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  Compound hazards, such as the sequential occurrence of Tropical Cyclones (TC) and humid heatwaves in close succession, are more destructive than individual and isolated occurrences of each hazard. While landfalling TCs cause catastrophic consequences from storm surges, strong winds, heavy rain, and pluvial flooding, they are often compounded by anomalous heat. The TC-heat joint occurrence raises significant concerns for public health and critical infrastructure, particularly since powerful TCs may lead to major power outages. For example, TC Remal in May 2024 damaged the coastlines of India and Bangladesh, bordering the Bay of Bengal (BoB), impacting > 10 million people without access to electricity and shelter, with an estimated damage totaling $600 million. For the eastern coast of India, with many small to large port cities, including two major urban agglomerates, Kolkata and Chennai, with populations > 10 million, the likelihood of TC-heat joint occurrence has not been assessed so far. We analyze 251 landfalling TCs on the eastern coast of India between 1982 and 2023. We show that ~16% of terrestrial humid heatwave peaks are compounded by the landfalling TCs, and ~8% of moist heat follows TCs. Further, we show the relative increase in peak wet-bulb temperature in TC-compounded heatwaves is as high as around 7−10% in pre-monsoon (April−May) and post-monsoon (October−December) seasons compared to heatwaves not compounded by the TCs. An anomalous rise in TC-compounded heatwave peaks is more pronounced and often exceeds terrestrial heatwave peaks during the post-monsoon season. Although the annual counts of landfalling TCs over BoB show a decreasing trend, our observational analysis of precursor coincidence rate confirms the increased likelihood of TC-compounded humid heat stress, preconditioned by strong to severe marine heat waves. The derived insights highlight a need to prepare adaptation planning for unprecedented compound tropical cyclones and extreme heat hazards when such sequential hazards are expected to occur more frequently in a warming climate.

  PublisherDOI

• Investigating the Interaction of Tropical Cyclone-Heatwave Compound Hazards in Urban Environments

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Impact of Gravity Segregation on Gas Injection Development in Condensate Gas Reservoirs: A Numerical Simulation Study

  Processes · 2025-05-26 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access

  Gravity segregation is a critical phenomenon in thick condensate gas reservoirs, significantly influencing fluid composition and phase behavior. Reservoir-scale numerical simulation, serving as an indispensable technical approach in modern petroleum engineering, provides both quantitative data support and theoretical frameworks for development strategy optimization. However, the impact of gravity segregation on the distribution of initial fluid compositions is often overlooked in conventional numerical simulations due to data limitations or underestimated importance. This oversight leads to systematic deviations between simulated reservoir performance and actual field observations, ultimately compromising the efficient development of reservoirs. This study analyzed PVT data from reservoir fluid samples at different depths to determine the initial fluid composition distribution. Two models were developed: one incorporating gravity segregation and another neglecting it, to evaluate their performance during gas injection. Key findings include: (i) Gravity segregation alters the initial fluid composition, creating lighter components near the reservoir top and heavier ones at the bottom, resulting in distinct phase behaviors and production dynamics. (ii) The model accounting for gravity segregation aligns better with historical production data, while the model neglecting it underestimates oil production rates by about 9% and overestimates oil recovery by 2–5% during gas injection, due to inaccurate fluid composition assumptions. (iii) The model without gravity segregation also underestimates differences in oil recovery between injection–production strategies, such as top versus bottom injection. This study highlights the critical role of gravity segregation in reservoir simulation and provides valuable insights for optimizing the development of condensate gas reservoirs with complex fluid distributions. The findings reveal that accounting for gravity segregation in reservoir simulation models through proper initialization of fluid distribution leads to improved simulation accuracy, thereby enabling more precise development strategy design.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Intense humid heat ─ tropical cyclone compound hazards in eastern coastal India

  npj natural hazards. · 2025-06-24 · 6 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  The eastern coast of India is a hotspot of both heatwaves and tropical cyclones (TCs). However, the potential for TCs to trigger or contribute to subsequent humid heatwaves over land (HHLs) remains unexplored. We assess compound interactions between marine heatwaves (MHWs), landfalling TCs, and HHLs during 1982–2023 at the Bay of Bengal (BoB), considering 33 urban and peri-urban sites within 200 km of coastline. HHLs at these sites demonstrate a significant upward trend, increasing from ~2 events/year in 1982−1991 to 6 events/year in 2014−2023. In contrast, TC-compounded HHLs—comprising 17% HHLs—maintain a stable frequency of ~1.4 events/year. In half of these compound extremes, HHLs follow TCs, often with ~8% higher HHL magnitudes within 5 days of landfall compared to uncompounded HHLs, especially for coastal sites. During the post-monsoon season, 33% of at-site record HHLs follow TCs, with record compounded HHL magnitudes exceeding up to 14% of record uncompounded HHL magnitudes. Meanwhile, over broad ocean areas, MHWs precondition up to 50% of TCs, and strong MHWs precondition up to 33% of rapidly intensified (RI) TCs; for the study sites, up to 50% of RI TCs are followed by HHLs. TC-heat compounding in the BoB—largely affected by MHW−TC−HHL event chains—occurs at rates (identified using seasonally varying thresholds) that notably exceed the previously reported global averages based on fixed thresholds.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Shifting hotspot of tropical cyclone clusters in a warming climate

  Nature Climate Change · 2025-07-31 · 7 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Multiple tropical cyclones can be present concurrently within one ocean basin, and these clusters can induce compound hazards within a short time window. While the western North Pacific has historically been home to most tropical cyclone clusters, how climate change might affect this is unclear. Here we use observations and high-resolution climate model simulations to develop a probabilistic model, assuming that tropical cyclones are mutually independent and occur randomly. Against this baseline, we identify outliers as clusters with dynamic interactions between tropical cyclones. We find that the recent global warming pattern induces major shifts in tropical cyclone cluster hotspots from the western North Pacific to the North Atlantic by modulating tropical cyclone frequency and synoptic-scale wave activity. Our probabilistic modelling indicates a tenfold increase in the likelihood of tropical cyclone cluster frequency in the North Atlantic, surpassing that in the western North Pacific, from 1.4 ± 0.4% to 14.3 ± 1.2% over the past 46 years.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Reinforcement learning–based adaptive strategies for climate change adaptation: An application for coastal flood risk management

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2025-03-18 · 9 citations

  articleOpen accessCorresponding

  Conventional computational models of climate adaptation frameworks inadequately consider decision-makers' capacity to learn, update, and improve decisions. Here, we investigate the potential of reinforcement learning (RL), a machine learning technique that efficaciously acquires knowledge from the environment and systematically optimizes dynamic decisions, in modeling and informing adaptive climate decision-making. We consider coastal flood risk mitigations for Manhattan, New York City, USA (NYC), illustrating the benefit of continuously incorporating observations of sea-level rise into systematic designs of adaptive strategies. We find that when designing adaptive seawalls to protect NYC, the RL-derived strategy significantly reduces the expected net cost by 6 to 36% under the moderate emissions scenario SSP2-4.5 (9 to 77% under the high emissions scenario SSP5-8.5), compared to conventional methods. When considering multiple adaptive policies, including accomodation and retreat as well as protection, the RL approach leads to a further 5% (15%) cost reduction, showing RL's flexibility in coordinatively addressing complex policy design problems. RL also outperforms conventional methods in controlling tail risk (i.e., low probability, high impact outcomes) and in avoiding losses induced by misinformation about the climate state (e.g., deep uncertainty), demonstrating the importance of systematic learning and updating in addressing extremes and uncertainties related to climate adaptation.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• PREEVENTS Track 2: Collaborative Research: Predicting Hurricane Risk along the United States East Coast in a Changing Climate

  NSF · $322k · 2019–2023

• Collaborative Research: Examing the Climatology of Extreme Storms in the Northeast US and Putting Hurricane Sandy in Context

  NSF · $35k · 2013–2014

• CAREER: Understanding and Designing Structures for Hurricane Wind and Surge Hazards under Changing Climate Conditions

  NSF · $536k · 2017–2023

• RAPID/Collaborative Research: Wave and Surge Structural Damage to Shorefront Residential Properties from Hurricane Sandy

  NSF · $15k · 2013–2013

• Hazard SEES: An Integrated Approach to Risk Assessment and Management in Responding to Land Falling Hurricanes in a Changing Climate

  NSF · $2.7M · 2015–2020

Frequent coauthors

• Kerry Emanuel

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  51 shared

• Dazhi Xi

  33 shared

• Michael Oppenheimer

  30 shared

• Daniel R. Chavas

  Purdue University System

  25 shared

• Avantika Gori

  Rice University

  23 shared

• Kairui Feng

  19 shared

• Erik H. Vanmarcke

  17 shared

• Robert E. Kopp

  Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

  15 shared

Education

• Post-Doc, Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  2012

• Ph.D., Civil and Environmental Engineering

  Princeton University

  2010

• M.S., Civil and Environmental Engineering

  Texas Tech University

  2005

• B.S., Civil Engineering

  Huazhong University of Science and Technology

  2002

Awards & honors

• Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award, National Sc…
• Howard B. Wentz, Jr. Junior Faculty Award, Princeton Univers…
• United States Frontiers of Engineering (FOE; Invited Speaker…
• Science of Risk Prize, Lloyd’s (2014)
• Natural Hazards Focus Group Award, American Geophysical Unio…