It may be cold outside now, but a new report finds that temperatures and sea levels are on the rise in the New York area, putting communities at risk. NY1's Bobby Cuza filed the following report.
Hurricane Sandy may have been an extreme weather event, but in the coming decades, "extreme" could become the norm.
"When we look at some types of extreme events, we're seeing multipliers, doubling or tripling of the frequency of some of these extremes," said Radley Horton of the New York City Panel on Climate Change.
The latest report of the New York City Panel on Climate Change, an independent group formed to help inform city officials on climate policy, for the first time makes climate projections out to the year 2100. It predicts that average annual temperatures here could rise by up to 8.8 degrees by the 2080s, compared to the 1980s; that annual precipitation could rise by 13 percent over the same period; and that the sea level could rise up to 50 inches by 2100, with a worst-case projection of six feet.
"Even if storms don’t change at all – so, if we just get the same types of hurricanes and nor'easters we've had in the past – just by raising that sea level baseline by five feet, you turn what's currently a sort of one-in-100-year flood event into something that happens, on average, roughly once every eight years or so," Horton said.
"The projections that we’re hearing about today assume that we don't act, in many ways, and I think the good news here is that we as a city are continuing to act," said Daniel Zarrilli, director of the mayor's Office of Recovery and Resiliency.
Indeed, City Hall on Tuesday highlighted a number of measures it's taking to mitigate climate change, including a pledge to reduce the city's greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050, as well as billions of dollars in planned resiliency measures. That includes a flood protection system for Manhattan's Lower East Side, now beginning preliminary design work.
The city has also launched a review of the food supply chain, in particular the Hunts Point market, which was narrowly spared by Hurricane Sandy.
"It was born out of the recognition of Sandy that perhaps we dodged a bullet in Hunts Point around our food distribution center," Zarrilli said.
Tuesday's report was the culmination of two years of work. Mayor Bill de Blasio has already commissioned the panel's next report, due early next year.