Is this plan enough to protect the city from rising sea level?
New York's proposals are based on hyper-local climate models specific to the city using the most up-to-date science available. The models, which predict climate trends through the 2050s, were crunched by the New York City Panel on Climate Change (NPCC), an independent group of scientists and engineers established in 2008 as part of PlaNYC, the city's original sustainability and climate strategy.
However, it's impossible to make any city fully resilient in the face of this inexorable rise in sea level (Radley Horton). Sea level rise in New York City has averaged 1.2 inches per decade since 1900, nearly twice the observed global rate. The NPCC estimates that in less than four decades the city's harbor could be 2.6 feet higher than it is today.
According to climate models, if countries don't quickly and drastically reduce their emissions by the 2050s, the earth's climate system will pass certain tipping points—such as the melting of the Greenland or Antarctic ice sheets—where climate change and its impacts will become unstoppable and irreversible.
Scientists are concerned that even the worst-case projections envisioned in Bloomberg's plan could be too conservative. That's because the model's projections stop in the 2050s, even though they will be used to develop construction guidelines for buildings that could stand in New York's floodplain for centuries.
Some experts think the city's climate adaptation projects should be designed to handle climate conditions far worse than even the NPCC's most severe estimates, particularly on sea level rise. The panel is currently extending its projections through 2100, though it's unclear how the Bloomberg administration will use them since it has already published its recovery plan.
According to the NPCC, the next few decades will be substantially worse for the city than was estimated the last time the panel modeled climate change mainly because of improved modeling.
Temperatures could rise 3.2 degrees Fahrenheit by the 2020s, compared to the 3-degree Fahrenheit rise the panel predicted in 2009, according to the models. By mid-century, New York City could warm by 6.6 degrees Fahrenheit—an increase of 32 percent over the panel's earlier 5-degree Fahrenheit prediction. Limiting warming to 2 degrees Celsius is seen as crucial to avoid the catastrophic effects of climate change.
However, it's impossible to make any city fully resilient in the face of this inexorable rise in sea level (Radley Horton). Sea level rise in New York City has averaged 1.2 inches per decade since 1900, nearly twice the observed global rate. The NPCC estimates that in less than four decades the city's harbor could be 2.6 feet higher than it is today.
According to climate models, if countries don't quickly and drastically reduce their emissions by the 2050s, the earth's climate system will pass certain tipping points—such as the melting of the Greenland or Antarctic ice sheets—where climate change and its impacts will become unstoppable and irreversible.
Scientists are concerned that even the worst-case projections envisioned in Bloomberg's plan could be too conservative. That's because the model's projections stop in the 2050s, even though they will be used to develop construction guidelines for buildings that could stand in New York's floodplain for centuries.
Some experts think the city's climate adaptation projects should be designed to handle climate conditions far worse than even the NPCC's most severe estimates, particularly on sea level rise. The panel is currently extending its projections through 2100, though it's unclear how the Bloomberg administration will use them since it has already published its recovery plan.
According to the NPCC, the next few decades will be substantially worse for the city than was estimated the last time the panel modeled climate change mainly because of improved modeling.
Temperatures could rise 3.2 degrees Fahrenheit by the 2020s, compared to the 3-degree Fahrenheit rise the panel predicted in 2009, according to the models. By mid-century, New York City could warm by 6.6 degrees Fahrenheit—an increase of 32 percent over the panel's earlier 5-degree Fahrenheit prediction. Limiting warming to 2 degrees Celsius is seen as crucial to avoid the catastrophic effects of climate change.
New York after 80m sea level rise
Action vs Non Action
The new models show that nearly one-quarter of the city will be in a floodplain by the mid-2050s. Sea levels in New York Harbor will likely rise four to eight inches by the 2020s, with a worst-case scenario of 11 inches. By the 2050s, they could rise 11 to 24 inches—nearly double what the NPCC projected four years ago—with the worst case being 31 inches. Rising seas will make storm surge more severe—meaning that in just a few decades even small storms could cause the type of flooding unleashed by superstorm Sandy.
New York City's resilient depends on how quickly the plan's initiatives are approved and implemented.