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Klaus Jacob at a conference in Low Library that examined future weather trends and their impact on the region
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In the worst-case scenario, a major hurricane will track across New York City at full force about 80 years from today, much like the one that wreaked havoc here back in 1938. But this time, with the storm surge riding atop on ocean already three feet higher even on a calm day, much of the region's ocean front property will end up as ocean bottom - power out, all transportation shut down, precious real estate destroyed and, paradoxically, water everywhere but nary a drop to drink.
Damage from one such storm could reach $250 billion or more, as much as a quarter of the area's total annual economy. And that doesn't begin to account for the toll on human lives.
"Manhattan could literally be cut into two separate islands,"said Klaus Jacob, an earth scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University. "On one island would be the mayor and what's left of Wall Street, on the other island would be the rest of us."
What makes such a storm scenario possible? The combination of human-induced global warming, which is causing sea levels to rise worldwide, along with our blind love affair with the risky development of low-lying coastal areas.
This is the issue being addressed at a special conference of scientific experts at Columbia University - What does the future of climate change hold in store for us, and what can and should we do about it?
"We already are experiencing the effects of a changing climate; we just have to recognize them for what they are," said Cynthia Rosenzweig, research scientist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia's Center for Climate Systems Research, and a leader of the conference. "Then, and this is really the hard part, we have to decide what to do about it."
The conference is timed with the release for public comment of a federally mandated study, Climate Change and a Global City: An Assessment of the Metropolitan East Coast Region, (MEC) which was prepared over the last two years by Rosenzweig, her co-leader William Solecki of Montclair State University, and a multidisciplinary team of contributing scientists such as Jacob.
Rather than simply lamenting the climate disasters to come and how we only have ourselves to blame though, the MEC conference and report have focused in on what we can do to prepare for a future of climate uncertainty with intelligent planning.
"The fact is, most of the significant impacts won't begin to show for another 50 years, which gives us time to prepare," Rosenzweig said. "In many ways then, what we're announcing at this conference is a golden opportunity to act now in order to create a better future for our great grandchildren."
In providing her overview of the report conclusions to begin the conference, Rosenzweig called for the creation of a "Regional Climate Awareness Interagency Task Force" charged with identifying all the potential hazards of climate change, the risks involved and the mitigating steps that could and should be taken.
Much of the problem in dealing with climate-change issues lies in the uncertainty of climate projections and the fact that impacts are not uniform. For example, while most experts agree that average temperatures across the region will rise as much as 10 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century, predicting what will happen to rainfall remains virtually impossible. And those climate effects that already strike the area, such as heat waves and storm flooding, tend to impact coastal communities and the poor and elderly in particular.
Still, all the MEC participants stressed the importance of beginning to deal with the challenges posed by climate change today as a community, rather than tomorrow as disparate special-interest groups reacting blindly to separate weather disasters.
Jacob likened the effort to a foot race against time up a hill that will only get steeper the longer we pretend that it isn't there.
"To win this race will require a fundamental shift in the culture of our regional planning that must outpace the rate of climate change," he said. "This race will not be easy, but we must face it, finance it and win it. The bottom line is, the sooner we begin to deal with this the less it will cost in terms of money, environmental degradation and human suffering. Ultimately, scientific uncertainty is a lousy excuse for inaction."
The MEC conference and report focus on seven crucial areas of climate impact:
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Coasts,
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Wetlands,
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Infrastructure,
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Water Supply,
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Public Health,
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Energy, and
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Institutional Decision-making.
The MEC report, including an executive summary highlighting the key results and conclusions, can be obtained as a PDF download at http://metroeast_climate.ciesin.columbia.edu. There will also be an electronic comment form available on the web site for the 30-day public comment period that begins today.
The MEC project is one of 19 contributing regional studies to the U.S. national climate assessment, sponsored by the U.S. Global Change Research Program and released for 60-days of public comment last week. The MEC component has been funded by the National Science Foundation with additional support from U.S. EPA Region II and the Columbia Earth Institute, which sponsored today's conference.
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