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By Samantha Maldonado, THE CITY
What’s in store for New York City because of climate change?
New projections from the New York City Panel on Climate Change (NPCC) confirm that the city will be hotter, rainier and wetter in the coming years — with major shifts hitting the city in the 2030s, less than a decade away.
The NPCC’s latest estimates, for example, project sea levels around the city to continue to rise between half a foot and just over a foot in the 2030s. Annual precipitation is expected to increase by up to 10% in those years, while the city could experience temperatures between 2 and 4.7 degrees warmer.
The estimates, which have not been previously reported, are part of a forthcoming paper from the NPCC Climate Science Working Group and were reviewed during a presentation to a northeast climate consortium earlier this month.
First convened in 2008, the NPCC is a group of 20 climate experts who advise policymakers on the latest science and strategies to address hazards facing the boroughs. The panel has come out with four comprehensive reports since 2010, and is expected to release its fifth in April.
The latest projections are fairly consistent with the previous estimates, which experts say underscore the urgency of protecting New Yorkers.
“The direction of the change and the general magnitude of those changes are very constant,” said Luis Ortiz, a climate scientist and professor at George Mason University, who worked on the report. “Things are going to get hotter and relatively wetter… We need to prepare, and we need to adapt now to get ready for those changes.”
The new predictions will inform the city government’s planning, policies and programs, including how to design projects and where to locate them, according to the Mayor’s Office of Climate and Environmental Justice.
Given what’s to come, the work can’t happen fast enough, said Klaus Jacob, a Columbia University geophysicist who previously served on the NPCC.
“The city is moving in the right direction,” he said, “but compared to how the weather and climate is changing, it’s a snail’s pace, and the climate is a rabbit.”
‘A Huge Problem’
The sea levels around New York City have already risen about a foot since 1900, a higher rate than the global average.
The NPCC expects sea levels around the city to continue to rise at least another foot — or up to almost two feet — by the 2050s. The range has to do with the amount of planet-warming gas emitted into the atmosphere.
“We don’t know, really, which carbon emissions or greenhouse gas emissions pathway we’re on,” Ortiz said.
Slashing emissions on the global scale could lead to the lower end of the projections, he said.
Compared to previous projections, the NPCC’s newest estimates anticipate less sea level rise in a high gas emissions scenario, but a greater sea level rise under models that assume less emitted gas.
For instance, previous NPCC estimates projected half a foot to 2.5 feet of sea level rise in the 2050s, compared to the latest estimates of one foot to two feet for the same period.
Higher seas mean worse storm surges and more frequent flooding during high tides.
“This is a huge problem,” said Amy Chester, managing director of resiliency nonprofit Rebuild By Design.
She pointed out how floodwaters overtopped parts of coastal Manhattan earlier this month because of storm surge and high tides.
“Just imagine that we have another two feet, even if it’s the lowest [estimate] — it wouldn’t even be overtopping, it would just be topped 100% of the time,” she said, noting the new estimates of at least two feet of sea level predicted by 2100.
More Rainy Days
The NPCC’s new estimates also predict average annual precipitation will increase up to 10% by the 2030s, 14% by the 2050s and up to 30% by 2100.
That means more frequent extreme rain events, similar to September 2021’s Hurricane Ida, as well as stronger rainstorms in general.
Scientists said there are some unknowns about drought risk, and those questions have to do with possible changing demand for drinking water, as well as evaporation caused by higher temperatures.
Global warming means New York City will also get hotter. It already has: average temperatures at Central Park, for instance, have risen a quarter of a degree per decade since 1900 — meaning the city is about 3 degrees warmer than it was during the Gilded Age.
Temperatures citywide are predicted to increase between two and 4.7 degrees by the 2030s, and between 5.1 and 13.5 degrees by 2100, according to the NPCC’s new modeling. The estimates for increasing temperatures are slightly higher but not significantly different compared to previous NPCC projections.
Columbia University climate professor and NPCC member Radley Horton explained that rising temperatures mean a greater amount of hot days, longer heat waves and warm weather that comes earlier and lasts longer.
“We know that heat waves pose a variety of greater risks, whether to human health or the risk of blackouts and power failure,” he said during the presentation.
Each year, heat leads to the deaths of an average of 370 people in New York City, though all New Yorkers are not equally vulnerable. And some neighborhoods — those with less trees or that lack a sea breeze — tend to be hotter than others. The projections do not account for such differences in temperature within the city.
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High rise buildings are a huge source of emissions, trap heat and negatively impact on the environment
High rises especially glass are not good for the environment.
Big single family home in a sprawl not good either.
Best for environment – smaller (like 10 story) apartment buildings with sustainable features and green space.
According to the EPA, the average multifamily unit uses half the energy of a single-family detached home. A study by Smart City Locating found that single-family homes use about twice as much energy as buildings with multiple living units.
The stats showing this are juked anyway. High rise glass buildings trap heat. One of the biggest reasons NYC is warming is because of more development. Single family homes are often surrounded by enough green space to balance things out.
Of course the stats are juked.
As well we are not discussing urban living vs suburban. We want to have both options, doesn’t mean all suburbanites have to live in cities.
While living in the city is concerned, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see how bad super talls are for everything- the environment, quality of living, etc. They are only good for someone with a lot of money and even a bigger ego.
“Green space to balance things out” is just another way of saying “sprawl”. Dense urban living is much better for the environment than suburban single family zoning – it takes up less land, it’s more efficient to heat and cool (when the heat escapes my apartment, some of it flows to my upstairs neighbor instead of out through a poorly insulated attic), and the biggest one of all is that city dwellers don’t need to drive as much!
I wish Mark Ruffalo would be asked about the environmental cost of blocking hundreds of what could be the greenest homes in the country.
Think global, act local!
https://news.berkeley.edu/2014/01/06/suburban-sprawl-cancels-carbon-footprint-savings-of-dense-urban-cores
People need their space. Dense urban living is not for everyone. Dense urban living can lead to increased aggression, decreased privacy and decreased neighborhood satisfaction. Let’s face it, housing turnover is much higher on the UWS than the suburbs. Whenever people had the option of more space, they took it. Manhattan had way more people in 1910 than it does today thanks to tenement housing, when Queens and the Bronx developed, people took advantage to escape the pitfalls of dense urban living. When the suburbs developed, people took advantage to escape the pitfalls of dense living. The reality is that many people see dense living as a phase and even some of the urbanists living among us on the UWS have upstate and hamptons country homes.
Dense urban living is not for everyone, and suburban sprawl isn’t for everyone either. But we only make urban living illegal, not single family homes. Zoning codes set a maximum density, never a minimum. If people want dense urban living, and it’s better for the environment, what is the justification for banning it?
It’s absurd to think that 100 separate houses produce less environmental impact than a single building housing 100 families.
What is your point? We shouldn’t have suburbs and haul suburban families into studios in the city neighborhoods with bad schools and crime? It might be your option, doesn’t meant it is ok with everyone.
As much as single family zoning is hated. The UWS has its own version of single family zoning, historic district landmarking.
There are ways to make single family homes more environmentally friendly and most people prefer single family homes. Time and time again, there are people who leave the UWS for NJ or Westchester because they want more space and PRIVATE green space next to others who desire the same. As much as the UWS is a family friendly neighborhood, it has heavy competition with the suburbs for those who wish to raise a family.
If you plan to buy a place to live in NYC, any neighborhood which has the word “heights” is a good choice.
I read this in this morning’s edition of The City and wished that it contained more about NYC’s plans to cope with the expected changes. By the way, I like the WSR’s recent collaboration with The City, an important source of local news, well worth subscribing to and supporting.
Climate change is real and a serious issue. Climate change is something that should be addressed. But the problem is that there is only so much sacrifice people will tolerate, especially in a post pandemic environment. Look at how many people wear masks and are COVID conscious to this day? People will sacrifice so that the pandemic will be solved in short order, people made sacrifices so we can win wars. However, climate change isn’t a problem that will be solved in neither our nor our children’s lifetime and lowering people’s living standards and fundamentally changing the way people live for the worse will cause extremism to become a bigger problem than it is now. There’s only so much sacrifice you can ask of people, COVID proved that to me.
How are NPCCs’ 2010 projections for the 2020s tracking so far?
Best for environment are apartment buildings of 6-10 stories.
Not luxury high-rises.
https://archinect.com/news/article/150278373/building-tall-isn-t-necessarily-better-for-the-environment-according-to-new-research
That is a helpful study, but it only looks at the upfront environmental cost of the building itself. It ignores the biggest environmental benefit of higher density/taller buildings – the lower carbon emissions of the people who actually live in high density neighborhoods. “Pomponi and his coauthors acknowledge that their model only goes so far; future studies should include the detailed emissions impact from transportation and other issues, they say.”
The biggest action any individual can take, by far, to reduce their carbon emissions is to move from the suburbs to the city – https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/carbon-costs-quantified Taller buildings allow more people to do that.
So if there is developer proposing a new building, environmentally conscious UWSers should push for them to be as tall as possible to allow for more people to live a low carbon lifestyle. (Note that I don’t think that anybody should be forced to live in the high rises – just that a lot of people do and we should stop placing limits on allowing them do so!). More choices about where to live and lower carbon emissions!
The two great truths of our times and our children’s’ times, regardless of party politics or wars: mass human migration and climate change. If only political leaders could lead with these, and create strong, reassuring, humane policies on the migration- because we need labor, and we don’t need a non-citizen class hiding from laws and endlessly exploited- then we could perhaps have the courage to act as a group better on climate change, and move toward sustainability for all in the space we have left. It’s a fair amount of space, but we must be so careful with our shared resources!
Plenty of Americans in need of employment.
Wages too low? Ever consider the extent to which that is a result of mass immigration?
We have 8.8 million unfilled jobs and a twenty five year high in the percentage of people in prime working age who are employed.
We need more workers not less.