The connection between raining and flooding is perhaps more biblical than newsworthy, but don’t tell that to the folks in Iwilei.

Although there are no reports of Noah blaming his flooding problems on global warming, it is easy to see some connection.

The last month of rain brought with it a month of flooding, ponding and overflowing across Honolulu, with low-lying Iwilei being soggier than most spots.

The gritty industrial area is just across Nimitz Highway from Honolulu Harbor, so all the water rushing down storm drains pours out into the Pacific just across the street. Add a high tide and enough rain and Iwilei gets soaked.

Chip Fletcher, associate dean at University of Hawaii’s School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, cautions that there is no direct correlation between the recent high rain and resulting flooding and the mounting effects of global warming, but adds that this is something to watch.

“We are in the midst of the fourth most powerful El Nino on record, we have had a record number of tropical cyclones this year, and more importantly, there is just more water falling out of the sky than any gutter or drainage system can handle,” said Fletcher in an interview last week.

At the same time it is raining, there is also a global warming effect in operation.

“Global warming is our weather on steroids,” Fletcher said.

He explained that just because a baseball player on steroids may hit a home run in the third inning of a game, it would be incorrect to say he knocked it out of the park that day because of steroid use, but you can look at his averages and say his performance has changed because of steroids.

That is what global warming is doing in Hawaii.

Fletcher explained that in Hawaii that means air temperature has risen, rainfall and streamflow have decreased, rain intensity has increased, sea level and sea surface temperatures have increased and the ocean is acidifying.

Our rainy, unbearably hot summer is all about El Nino, Fletcher explained, noting that the cyclical El Nino ocean warming is not caused by global warming. Global warming, however, is responsible for higher sea levels.

“What is becoming so apparent is that as our drainage systems are over- whelmed by intense, intense rain and also rising seas, it leads to more damage and more flooding and more damage,” said Fletcher.

Sea level rise is obviously a big deal for those of us living on islands. Exactly how high the water is going is still a question. The answer is somewhere between high and really high.

Several years ago, an international conference described a 3-foot increase in sea levels by the end of the century as a “worst case scenario,” Fletcher said. Then two weeks ago, NASA announced that a 3-foot increase is both expected and unavoidable.

Government can get as green as it wants; the water is still coming.

Realizing that means not just accepting it, but planning for it.

“Perhaps for the next half-century, we can build our way out it,” Fletcher said by way of recommending that construction include post and pier construction, not building on grade and planning entrances and exits that include new, higher roadways.

“The first areas to flood will be those right by the ocean, so we should think of new drainage and building codes for areas like Iwilei.”

The recommendation for Honolulu and the other counties is to think a little deeper.

“Instead of the normal lens of socio-economic factors, but through a lens of climate change and what that will contribute,” Fletcher advised.

Ignoring it just ensures flooding and catastrophe.

Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Reach him at rborreca@staradvertiser.com.