New Climate Change Study Calls For Urgent Action To Prepare NYC

[Karmadillo]

http://gothamist.com/2015/02/17/climate_change_nyc.php

We can keep debating global climate change (it's real!) until the last polar bear takes its final gasping breath. But let's never forget that this seaside city is in imminent danger—a new study confirms New York's temperatures are skyrocketing, sea levels are rising, and we're in for one hell of a grim ride.

The Mayor's Office has just released this year's incredibly bleak New York City Panel on Climate Change report today, noting that their findings "underscore the urgency of not only mitigating our contributions to climate change, but adapting our city to its risks." Not that this should be surprising at this point. Here are some fun things to look forward to, according to the report:

Mean annual temperatures are expected to shoot up by 4.1 to 5.7 degrees Fahrenheit by the 2050s. By the 2080s, those mean annual temperatures could increase by as much as 8.8 degrees Fahrenheit. For comparison's sake, mean annual temperature increased a total of 3.4 degrees Fahrenheit from 1900 to 2013, so that's a pretty big jump in under a century.

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The news gets worse. The sea level will increase between 11 inches and 21 inches by the 2050s; by the 2080s, it'll be up to between 18 and 29 inches, and by 2100, we can expect an increase of between 22 and 50 inches. And if the science gods are against us—and aren't they always?—that sea level could see a rise as high as six feet by 2100. Bye, Red Hook!

In fact, by 2100, sea level will have risen so much it'll have doubled the area for 2013's designated coastal flooding zones for both the 100-year flood and the 500-year flood, leaving a lot of previously untouched inland vulnerable: