New York City adapts to climate change

At long last, the final publication is out! I served as a consulting editor to this book. From Environmental Leader: New York City published its plans to adapt itself to a changing climate last week. The report outlines recommendations by the New York City Panel on Climate Change (NPCC) for the city government in order to prepare the city for changing climatic conditions.

The report cites climate change as a key factor in several emergency situations already facing the city, including the extreme weather that disrupted public transportation in August 2007. Rising sea levels and temperatures, both of which the report says is already happening, will continue to strain city-wide infrastructure, and will interact with other stresses such as pollution and population growth. Increasing heat and heat waves, storm surge, and inland flooding are all like to occur with greater frequency, hampering operations and damaging buildings and infrastructure.

The report recommends that climate change adaptation strategies be incorporated into the management plans of critical city infrastructure through a mechanism called Flexible Action Pathways, which will allow adaptation strategies to evolve in the future in the wake of changing conditions.…Recommendations for action

• 1. Adopt a risk-based approach to develop Flexible Adaptation Pathways, which includes regular reviews of the city’s adaptation program;

• 2. Create a mandate for an ongoing body of experts that provides advice for the City of New York. Areas that could be addressed by experts in the future include regular updates to climate change projections, improved mapping and geographic data, and periodic assessments of climate change impacts and adaptation for New York City to inform a broad spectrum of climate change adaptation policies and programs;

• 3. Establish a climate change monitoring program to track and analyze key climate change factors, impacts and adaptation and evolving-knowledge indicators in New York City, as well as to study relevant advances in research on related topics. This involves creating a network of monitoring systems and organizations and a region-wide indicator database for analysis…

A panorama of the High Line Park in Chelsea, near the shore, by Gbarill, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license