Other aspects of climate change, beyond the surmise of the possible impact of sea ice depletion, have also been speculated to have been key to the dynamics of Hurricane Sandy. These speculations can also be largely rejected based on current scientific understanding. To reiterate, NOAA's State of Science Fact Sheet concerning Atlantic hurricanes and global warming (released May 2012), based on assessment by numerous researchers and NRC review, states that there has been no change in Atlantic tropical cyclones since the late 1800s. The IPCC (2012) SREX report further indicates that there is low confidence concerning the effects of global warming on tropical cyclones...either their intensity, frequency, o their tracks. Regarding extratropical cyclones, a feature that strongly affected the path and eventual dynamics of Sandy along the Mid-Atlantic coast, the IPCC SREX report indicates a poleward shift of the tracks in such storms due in part to global warming, contrary to the southward plunge of this particular storm that merged with Hurricane Sandy in late October 2012. The case of the unusual merger of two weather systems into a single potent and destructive force along the eastern seaboard in late October 2012 thus is most likely an example of a great event having little underlying cause.

Nonetheless, the particular synoptic development itself was highly predictable a week in advance, as a consequence of major advances in NOAA weather forecasting capabilities. This, despite the fact that it was not an event to have been anticipated either specifically or statistically from consideration of underlying climate forcings. The combination of the two weather systems, one a late-season tropical cyclone and the other an early winter-season extratropical cyclone, is a rare occurrence along the eastern seaboard. In this sense, the combined storm was a "surprise" from a climatological perspective. It does not follow thereby, however, that the resulting super-storm must have been a consequence of climate change, as some hypothesized, or that the event could not have occurred in the absence of climate change (either related to sea ice changes or other manifestations of a warming climate including warming oceans).

The physical processes leading to the event, though uncommon over the west Atlantic, are more typical in other regions. Such combinations are especially climatologically more common in the far western Pacific. There, a greater frequency of northward moving typhoons interact with the polar jet steam of east Asia, which owing to the vast expanse of the Asian land mass, begins to acquire winter-like characteristics earlier than it's Atlantic counterpart. The resulting Pacific "super storms" are less notorious since they mature over the open waters of the North Pacific and pose little threat to major metropolitan areas. Yet, the physical processes of their formation are likely an excellent analogue for the "super storm" that was initially Hurricane Sandy and then became post-tropical in the shadow of the eastern seaboard during late October 2012.