Ew! Hudson River bacteria linked to sewage

James M. O'Neill in NorthJersey.com: Researchers have found antibiotic-resistant strains of disease-causing bacteria living in some near-shore segments of the Hudson River from the Tappan Zee Bridge to lower Manhattan, largely connected with raw sewage dumped into the river.

The heaviest concentrations of these drug-resistant bacteria were found along the Hudson's shoreline near Piermont Pier in Rockland County and at Yonkers in Westchester County. They were also found on the Manhattan side of the river at 125th Street, as well as in Flushing Bay near La Guardia Airport and in Newtown Creek, which separates Brooklyn and Queens.

...The locations with heavy concentrations of the antibiotic-resistant bacteria also had high numbers of certain bacteria that indicate the presence of raw sewage in the water. Many older sewer systems combine sewage and storm water from streets, but during heavy rains cannot handle the added volume and dump raw sewage into the Hudson through combined sewer outfalls....

Aerial view of the George Washington Bridge over the Hudson, shot by Ajay Tallam, Wikimedai Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Climate change could cripple New York transportation

Andrew Freedman in Climate Central: When arriving at La Guardia Airport in New York, it’s easy to see the stark realities it faces in trying to cope with global warming. As jets glide in over the brackish waters of Flushing Bay, one can almost reach out and touch the water as it laps against the small levees at runway’s edge.

...As sea level increases in response to manmade global warming, the 100-year storm is turning into a far more common event, and climate change adaptation is taking on a heightened sense of urgency throughout the transportation sector. The challenges are particularly acute in the New York City area, where mass transit moves more than 8 million people every day, 24/7, into and out of a city with 520 miles of waterfront.

Given the climate change-related challenges the city faces, it’s no surprise New York is mobilizing to fortify its infrastructure. It is spending $1.5 billion over 15 years to improve its stormwater management, cooling white roofs and clean-fuel buses, and has pledged to reduce city-wide greenhouse gas emissions below 2005 levels by 2030....

That's La Guardia's runways in the upper middle of the shot, shot by Andreas Praefcke, public domain

Major storms could submerge New York City in next decade

Suzanne Goldenberg in the Guardian (UK): Irene-like storms of the future would put a third of New York City streets under water and flood many of the tunnels leading into Manhattan in under an hour because of climate change, a new state government report has warned. Sea level rise due to climate change would leave lower Manhattan dangerously exposed to flood surges during major storms, the report, which looks at the impact of climate change across the entire state of New York, warns.

"The risks and the impacts are huge," said Art deGaetano, a climate scientist at Cornell University and lead author of the ClimAID study. "Clearly areas of the city that are currently inhabited will be uninhabitable with the rising of the sea." Factor in storm surges, and the scenario becomes even more frightening, he said. "Subway tunnels get affected, airports - both LaGuardia and Kennedy sit right at sea level - and when you are talking about the lowest areas of the city you are talking about the business districts."

The report, commisioned by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, said the effects of sea level rise and changing weather patterns would be felt as early as the next decade. By the mid-2020s, sea level rise around Manhattan and Long Island could be up to 10 inches, assuming the rapid melting of polar ice continues. By 2050, sea-rise could reach 2.5ft and more than 4.5ft by 2080 under the same conditions.

In such a scenario, many of the tunnels - subway, highway, and rail - crossing into the Bronx beneath the Harlem River, and under the East River would be flooded within the hour, the report said. Some transport systems could be out of operation for up to a month....

Traveling through the Holland Tunnel, from Manhattan to New Jersey. Shot by Kmf164, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license

Deadly floods hit US northeast in wake of Irene

Terra Daily via AFP: Heavy rain on Thursday swamped areas of the US northeast already sodden from Hurricane Irene, with up to five people killed as flash floods forced over 100,000 to leave their homes.

The National Weather Service (NWS) issued a flash flood warning for counties in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Maryland and Virginia, as towns became inundated, busy highways closed down and commuter lines backed up.

US President Barack Obama declared an emergency in New York state, ordering federal agencies to coordinate disaster relief efforts to "save lives and to protect property and public health and safety," the White House said.

Some 100,000 people in Pennsylvania's Luzerne county are under "mandatory evacuation" orders, including 20,000 in the city of Wilkes-Barre, according to local officials….

Preparing New York City for hurricanes

Boyd Cohen in Fast Company: Thankfully, Hurricane Irene turned out to be much weaker than predicted. Despite its relative weakness compared to projections, Irene still wreaked havoc up and down the East Coast, leading to at least 40 deaths, loss of power for 9 million people and billions in damages.

Many of us in North America were transfixed by New York City because of its symbolic importance, its sheer density and the rare occurrence of a hurricane in the city (the last hurricane to threaten New York was in 1985). While watching the events unfold and hearing the stories of what Mayor Bloomberg and his team were doing to prepare for the worst, I couldn’t help but think that there is so much more we could be doing to prepare our cities for extreme storm events.

…What if GPS, Wi-Fi and mobile technology were completely ubiquitous in all parts of the city, including the poorest parts? City administrators could enter in the GPS coordinates of everything from at-risk neighborhoods and rivers to the location of the nearest safe shelters, the nearest transit option to escape the city to higher ground and the nearest available potable water sources and much more. Assuming all citizens had access to GPS-enabled devices, citizens in distress could indicate with a text to 911 that they were in trouble and the GPS coordinates would be instantaneously available to first responders. With some kind of opt-in system, residents could even receive real-time text updates tied to their GPS coordinates.

…What if the entire transit system--buses, light rail, metro, and subway--were all connected with real-time digital systems? What if they could be shut down and turned on like we turn on and off our lights? What if, in the event of a major storm, evacuation, or terrorist attack, administrators could instantly re-route all transit and reverse the direction of the metro lines so that they all leave the city? While there are few--if any--examples of transit systems this smart yet, pieces of these solutions already exist.

…ConEdison, a major utility in the New York City area, preemptively shut down power to neighborhoods at most risk in advance of Irene. One of the reasons for this was fear that power would go out while someone was in an elevator. Instead of shutting down city blocks due to concerns about power going in and out in a few buildings, smart grids would allow utilities to isolate at-risk buildings and easily shut down and restart power. Smart grids combined with distributed energy could allow for the redistribution of energy to affected buildings....

The High Line in Manhattan, New York City at West 20th Street, looking downtown (south), shot by Beyond My Ken, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported

US flood victims still in the dark, stuck in mud

Scott Malone in Reuters: Residents of several Northeast states approached the Labor Day holiday weekend mired in mud and stuck in the dark on Thursday nearly a week after Hurricane Irene swallowed parts of the region with flooding. About 1.1 million homes and businesses on the East Coast were still without electricity after Irene knocked out power to more than 6.7 million customers on its rampage last Saturday and Sunday.

The upcoming long weekend, normally a celebration of the end of summer, will be a wet, stinky mess for hundreds of thousands of homeowners who suffered damage, their cities and towns submerged under floodwaters in states such as New York, New Jersey and Vermont. Hundreds of people were rescued in Paterson, New Jersey, one of several New York City suburbs that were under water while the city itself went relatively unscathed some 20 miles away.

In Vermont, the National Guard airlifted food and water to towns cut off by storm-damaged highways. Upstate New York saw rural mountain resorts flooded, ruining business for the holiday weekend. "Everything smells like sewer because the water got up so high. It stinks so bad," Melody Hawkins, 55, said as she sat on the stoop of her home in Ludlow, one of more than a dozen towns in Vermont -- an inland state normally protected from tropical storms -- to face severe flooding....

At 11:00 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time on August 28, Irene finally became a post-tropical cyclone near the U.S.-Canadian border, the U.S. National Hurricane Center reported. NASA image

Subway closes in New York as hurricane nears

James Barron in the New York Times: New York became a city without one of its trademarks — the nation’s largest subway system — on Saturday as Hurricane Irene charged northward and the city prepared to face powerhouse winds that could drive a wall of water over the beaches in the Rockaways and between the skyscrapers in Lower Manhattan.

The city worked to complete its evacuation of about 370,000 residents in low-lying areas where officials expected flooding to follow the storm, and the transportation system — the subways, along with buses and commuter rail lines — shut down at noon. Police officers sounded the warning, strolling along subway platforms and telling people the next train would be the last. The conductor of a No. 4 train that pulled into the Borough Hall station in Brooklyn at 12:14 p.m. had the same message.

...Soon subway employees were stretching yellow tape across the entrances to stations to keep people from going down the steps and into an underground world that was suddenly off limits, but not deserted. Transit workers were charged with executing a huge, mostly underground ballet, moving 200 subway trains away from outdoor yards that could flood if the storm delivered the 6 to 12 inches of rain that forecasts called for. The trains were to be parked in underground tunnels across the city, making regular runs impossible.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said that mass transit was “unlikely to be back” in service on Monday. The mayor also said that electricity could be knocked out in Lower Manhattan if Consolidated Edison to shut off the power pre-empt the problems that flooding could cause for its cables...

New York City subway map, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Our former headquarters rather vulnerable

This macho aircraft you see on the deck of the Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum is McDonnell F3H Demon, a few blocks from the erstwhile Manhattan branch of Carbon Based, otherwise known as my apartment. We lived on the second floor.

With climate risk very much on my mind, I would tell my wife that a bad hurricane on a dangerous track could send a storm surge higher than our second floor window. We were in flood zone one (I'm not sure whether that's Zone A, the mandatory evacuation zone for Hurricane Irene). She would smile pleasantly at me and treat my dire warning with irony.

Now that we've let that apartment got and are living in the woods full time, she's absorbed in nonstop reports of Gotham inundation, storm surges, flying debris, and other cheery topics on the Weather Channel, which, as Jim Gaffigan insists, is clearly pro-hurricane.

Of course, the actual impact of Irene may turn out otherwise, a rain not even bad enough to disrupt the Falun Gong protests always underway, since our building was across the street from the Chinese consulate. The bad-tempered seagulls that roost on the hawser chains of the Intrepid may just crouch and ride out the wind. We'll see.

Drought-prone pasts may foretell New York’s and Atlanta’s futures

Terra Daily: New York City and Atlanta have both experienced droughts in the past few decades that required them to implement water restrictions and conservation measures. However, a new study of tree-ring data spanning the past 400 years indicates that droughts in those cities and their surrounding regions were typically longer and more frequent centuries ago than they were for most of the 20th century.

In addition, recent decades have brought longer drought cycles similar to those prevalent before the mid-1800s. A return to drought patterns of past centuries, the study's authors say, could seriously strain the water resources of both of those densely populated regions.

"We can handle two to three-year droughts, but if three and four and five-year droughts are possible, we're not prepared," says Neil Pederson, a research professor with the Tree Ring Laboratory at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York, which created the new tree-ring drought records. He adds that the familiar scene in the western U.S. of fights and lawsuits over water "is starting to play out here in the East."…

The Harlem Meer in Central Park in Winter New York City, shot by Piero d'Houin dit Triboulet, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported

New York report predicts rising sea level

A disclosure alert – Carbon Based participated in an earlier stage of this project… from the Chronicle (New York): A new state environmental report predicts sea levels could rise more than four feet in some coastal areas of New York state over the next 70 years with dramatic implications for New York City, Long Island and the lower Hudson Valley. The draft report from the Sea Level Rise Task Force notes New York Harbor’s waters have risen 15 inches in 150 years. Harbor gauges show they rose four to six inches since 1960.

Sea level rise affecting the Lower Hudson Valley and Long Island is projected to be 2 to 5 inches by the 2020s and 12 to 23 inches by the end of this century, according to the report. Regular or profound flooding could threaten rail movement throughout the Hudson Valley, including plans for high-speed rail development, the report says. The sea level rise will also push the Hudson River salt front upriver, threatening water supplies of several Hudson Valley communities and businesses.

The Rising Waters project brought together private and public stakeholders in transportation, health care, utilities, emergency preparedness, planning and environmental advocacy. Several stakeholders are now developing a climate change speakers bureau in the Hudson Valley to promote a sustainable shoreline initiative and restore marshes. Rising Waters was spearheaded by The Nature Conservancy’s eastern New York chapter and partners such as the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation’s Hudson River Estuary Program and National Estuarine Research Reserve, Cornell University, the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, and Sustainable Hudson Valley….

Albert Bierstadt's 1886 painting, "Autumn Woods"

Report from New York task force on sea level rise

PR Newswire: New York State Department of Environmental Conservation ( DEC ) Acting Commissioner Peter Iwanowicz today announced the release of the draft report of the New York State Sea Level Rise Task Force for public comment. ...

The State Legislature created the Sea Level Rise Task Force in 2007 and charged it with preparing a report to assess the state's vulnerability to sea level rise and developing recommendations for a plan to protect coastal communities and natural resources. The Legislature directed the task force to "evaluate ways of protecting New York's remaining coastal ecosystems and natural habitats, and increasing coastal community resilience in the face of sea level rise, applying the best available science …"

…The draft report includes nine findings and 14 specific recommendations for action. The findings include projections of up to 55 inches of sea level rise by the 2080s in some coastal areas of New York. New York Harbor has already experienced an increase in sea level of more than 15 inches in the past 150 years, with harbor tide gauges showing a rise of between 4 and 6 inches since 1960.

According to the report, sea level rise will have dramatic implications for New York's coastal communities and their natural resources. Every community along the Hudson River, from the Troy to New York Harbor, and along Long Island Sound and the Atlantic coastline will be affected. The report also found that the combination of rising sea level, climate change and continuing development in high-risk areas has raised the level of New York's vulnerability to powerful coastal storms. Without meaningful action, this vulnerability will increase in area and magnitude over time. The report also finds that all of the utilities and infrastructure systems upon which our modern society relies-sewage, stormwater, fuel storage, energy generation, communication, solid waste management and transportation- could become vulnerable to coastal flooding.

George McCord's "New York Harbor"

Focusing on resilience

PR Newswire: "A focus on ‘resilience,’ on climate adaptation, must be at the center of any realistic approach to climate change. That is why we're here on this first day of Climate Week NYC," commented Global Adaptation Institute CEO Dr. Juan Jose Daboub to reporters after the keynote panel discussion on "Risk and Resilience," co-sponsored by Swiss Re and the Climate Group.

"The need for urgent action on adaptation measures is supported by the study Swiss Re released today that finds cost-effective adaptation measures can mitigate potential loss by 90 percent in some cases. Global Adaptation Institute (www.GlobalAdaptationInstitute.org) endorses this important focus on climate resilience," affirmed Daboub at the climate gathering.

One participant termed today's Climate Week NYC event on resilience/adaptation "an excellent follow-on" to last week's high-level session in Washington where Global Adaptation Institute hosted 30 top people for a one and a half day strategy session on this key environmental topic of climate adaptation.

…"Private investment is absolutely vital. Our Institute will directly fund initiatives that build resilience to climate change ('global warming'). It will be positive if the UN Framework Conference on Climate Change (UNFCCC) increases its focus on Adaptation, but vulnerable populations can't wait for the Kyoto Protocol or other global treaties on carbon and greenhouse gases to save them," Daboub emphasized at today's New York event against the backdrop of the annual UN General Assembly, amid preparations for the Cancun Climate Summit/COP-16 meeting in December….

George McCord's "New York Harbor"

Can New York handle a hurricane?

Remy Melina and Robert Roy Britt in Live Science: The National Hurricane Center warns that Hurricane Earl may swing by dangerously close to the U.S. East Coast before curving back out to sea. While the odds are it won't strike New York City directly, such an event is not unprecedented, and the city has plans in place to evacuate — and to hunker down — if need be.

Problem is, there would be precious little time to prepare. And while the forecast suggests it is very unlikely Hurricane Earl will strike Manhattan with more than a glancing blow, a direct hit by a hurricane is ultimately inevitable, scientists say. Because hurricanes move more quickly and become very difficult to predict once they head north of the Carolinas, experts say there might be just hours to issue evacuation warnings before a storm hits.

Compounding this, the Big Apple has one of highest population densities in the nation – more than 8 million people live in New York City. Based on studies by the Army Corps of Engineers, officials have determined that vulnerable, low-lying areas in and around New York City and metropolitan New Jersey would need to start heading out sooner than what is typically ordered in Florida and other hurricane-prone states.

Frankly put: There would not be enough time to get everyone out. Disaster plans for New York City focus therefore on getting people out of low-lying areas that might be inundated by storm surges, and having others stay put or move to safe locations within the city….

Track map of all landfalling New York hurricanes

More frequent, more intense heat waves in store for New York City

City College of New York: Heat waves like those that baked the Northeast in July are likely to be more frequent and more intense in the future, with their effects amplified in densely built urban environments like Manhattan, according to climate scientists at The City College of New York (CCNY).

“Manhattan is subject to an urban heat island effect because its physical landscape is significantly different from the surrounding suburbs,” said Dr. Jorge Gonzalez, NOAA-CREST Professor of Mechanical Engineering in CCNY’s Grove School of Engineering. “This makes heat waves here more intense because Manhattan cannot cool off as readily as outlying areas.” Factors that contribute to the urban heat island effect include energy demand, air quality, asphalt surfaces and exhaust fumes.

Data collected by City College’s New York City Meteorological Network (NYCMetNet), indicate that during the first July heat wave overnight low temperatures ran 10 to 15 degrees (Fahrenheit) higher in Manhattan than in Long Island or in western New Jersey, while daytime highs were roughly the same. NYCMetNet is a networked system of several hundred ground-based sensors throughout metropolitan New York that gather weather and climate data.

High temperatures do not dissipate as quickly in Manhattan as in other areas because of the large amount of stored energy contained in its massive buildings, Professor Gonzalez explained. “While surrounding suburban and green areas may perceive the same maximum temperatures, the built regions will perceive them for longer periods of time.”

Part of NYCMetNet’s mission is to study and better describe urban climate and weather by using New York City as an outdoor laboratory to observe environmental processes in complex urban environments. “Our goal is to produce the next generation of physical models to describe climate and weather,” he continued. “Our vision is to show how cities modify climate and weather to scales that are relevant to people’s lives.”…

Temperatures in midtown Manhattan and the Upper West and Upper East Sides were hotter than those reported in Central Park, Washington Heights and Inwood. Map from CUNY website

New York and Long Island water tables more than two feet higher since April 2009

US Geological Survey: Groundwater-table levels in New York City and on Long Island were about 2.5 feet higher on average and as much as 9 feet higher this April than they were last year, according to preliminary findings from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). Although groundwater levels are slowly beginning to decline in most places, the water table is still near record highs. Currently, about a half million houses and businesses are located where the water table is less than 11 feet below land surface.

“Groundwater flooding due to the elevated water table is still occurring in many areas, but if seasonal conditions prevail, levels should continue to slowly decline in most areas throughout the summer and early fall,” said USGS hydrologist Ronald Busciolano. “Water levels are slow to decline in some areas due to differences in local geology.”

Water levels measured in April 2010 from more than 600 wells and 30 streams and lakes on Long Island and in New York City indicate the largest increases occurred at higher elevations on Long Island where low-permeability soils are found locally. Smaller, but more harmful changes occurred in low-lying areas where basements, septic systems and other underground structures are close to the water table.

Increasing temperatures, rising sea levels, changes in precipitation patterns, and more intense and frequent extreme weather events are predicted for Long Island and New York City by climate change scientists who are studying the issue. Generally, a rise in sea level and more frequent and intense storms would increase the potential for groundwater flooding and storm-surge damage in low-lying areas.

The Shinnecock Light in 1945 (demolished in 1948), from a Coast Guard picture

In series of flyovers, a scientific snapshot of New York City

Mireya Navarro in the New York Times: While most residents were sleeping, a twin-engine Shrike Commander flew serial missions over the city recently, cruising low like Superman and back and forth like a lawn mower. Equipped with a laser system, the plane collected highly precise images of the city, its rooftops, trees, wetlands and much of what lies in between.

The early morning flyovers are expected to yield the most detailed three-dimensional picture of New York City to date, with an emphasis on structures, elevations, sun and shade, and nooks and crannies relevant to the city’s emergency response system and its environmental goals.

The data will be used, among other things, to create up-to-date maps of the areas most prone to flooding, the buildings best suited for the installation of solar power and the neighborhoods most in need of trees. An advisory panel of experts formed by the mayor has warned that the city must prepare for more rain and an increased risk of coastal flooding in the coming decades as a result of global climate change.

Rohit T. Aggarwala, the director of the city’s Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability, said the effort would result in a picture of New York’s physical space “in far more detail than what we had before.” The effort, which will cost about $450,000, is part of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s broader environmental agenda, known as PlaNYC….

An aerial view of Manhattan in 1919

Is New York City prepared for its Katrina?

Diane Vacca in Chelsea Now (New York City) spending some time on a topic close to my heart – I served as a consulting editor to the New York City Panel on Climate Change: ….Last year Mayor Bloomberg convened the New York Panel on Climate Change (NPCC) to study the impacts of climate change on our infrastructure, and their projections are being used by the Climate Change Adaptation Task Force, which is comprised of 40 city, state and federal agencies and private companies. “Storm surge barriers could be a part of an eventual coordinated strategy, but right now they are just exploring all available options,” Farrell Sklerov of New York City Department of Environmental Protection told Chelsea Now.

These options include “soft” preventive measures like beefing up the natural buffers of the coastline by restoring dunes, adding sand to beaches and preserving wetlands. The public interest, however, is losing the battle to private investment and real estate development of the highly desirable and valuable waterfront. Other “hard” measures besides storm surge barriers include building seawalls and raising bulkheads.

…Vivien Gornitz of Columbia University and NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies is on the mayor’s NPCC. Gornitz and her colleagues are not “very enthusiastic” about storm surge barriers. In a private communication, Gornitz observed that since the barriers won’t protect the entire city, leaving parts of every borough except Manhattan exposed, “serious political arguments would arise as to where to place the barriers, if at all.” Even some of the protected areas could be exposed, she wrote, when, “depending on the height of the surge, the water could flow around or past the barriers at some of the proposed locations— so there would be issues of equity— why should some neighborhoods be protected and others not?” Gornitz asked. “

….Yet cities in 40 countries around the world, including London, Tokyo, Rotterdam and St. Petersburg have installed storm surge barriers of varying designs. The Thames barrier of rotating gates has been deployed about 114 times to protect London from flooding, according to Bowman. Closer to home, the barriers in Stamford, Conn., protected the city in 1992 while New York City was struggling to keep its head above water.

“Put it this way,” [Malcolm] Bowman [head of the Stony Brook Storm Research Group] told Chelsea Now, “there are going to be barriers in our future. Unless the city’s going to evacuate and move up to the hills,” he said, “they’re going to be there. Anybody who tells you otherwise doesn’t really understand what’s going to happen. The sea level’s going to rise.”

…Sea level rise has crept steadily upward throughout the 20th century. The rise in sea level is due mostly to the warming of the world’s oceans and melting mountain glaciers. Recent satellite images show that parts of the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica are thinning, and pieces of glaciers are falling into the ocean more rapidly, contributing to the accelerated rise in sea level since the 1990s. In a study for NASA five years ago, Cynthia Rosenzweig and Vivien Gornitz projected a sea level rise of 15 to 19 inches by 2050 in New York City, and “if Greenland’s melting continues to accelerate,“ said Malcolm Bowman, “it could rise, by the end of the century, by as much as six feet.”

A Category 3 hurricane inundation projection (Image by NYCDEP CU SUNY/HydroQual; GISS AOM; USACE; NWS; FEMA; NY; NJ; CT

Rising Currents: Projects for New York’s Waterfront

The Museum of Modern Art in New York City has a new exhibit of keen interest to everyone in the adaptation business (March 24 through October 11): MoMA and P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center joined forces to address one of the most urgent challenges facing the nation’s largest city: sea-level rise resulting from global climate change. Though the national debate on infrastructure is currently focused on “shovel-ready” projects that will stimulate the economy, we now have an important opportunity to foster new research and fresh thinking about the use of New York City's harbor and coastline. As in past economic recessions, construction has slowed dramatically in New York, and much of the city’s remarkable pool of architectural talent is available to focus on innovation.

An architects-in-residence program at P.S.1 (November 16, 2009–January 8, 2010) brings together five interdisciplinary teams, including Architecture Research Office (ARO), to re-envision the coastlines of New York and New Jersey around New York Harbor and to imagine new ways to occupy the harbor itself with adaptive “soft” infrastructures that are sympathetic to the needs of a sound ecology. These creative solutions are intended to dramatically change our relationship to one of the city’s great open spaces.

This installation presents the proposals developed during the architects-in-residence program, including a wide array of models, drawings, and analytical materials.

Sunset over New York City. In "Flug und Wolken" (Flight and Clouds), Manfred Curry, Verlag F. Bruckmann, München (Munich), 1932. Image from United States Coast and Geodetic Survey

A blueprint for resilience in New York City

Media Newswire has a story that I am very pleased to be a part of. I worked as consulting editor for the New York City Panel on Climate Change: As world leaders gather at the climate summit in Copenhagen, experts here in New York are working on a way to help the city—and its 8.3 million residents—respond to the effects of climate change. The strategy, “Climate Change Adaptation in New York City: Building a Risk Management Response,” was devised by 15 experts, including eight from Columbia’s Earth Institute. Their findings and proposed blueprint for policymakers and stakeholders will be published in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences in January.

Climate change adaptation and mitigation efforts are both important elements in PlaNYC, New York City’s long-term sustainability plan, established in 2007 by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who will be in Copenhagen for the climate summit. To advance the city’s adaptation goals, Bloomberg convened experts from both academia and industry to form the New York City Panel on Climate Change ( NPCC ) in 2008. Funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, the NPCC’s main task is to provide technical advice and scientific expertise to the New York City Climate Change Adaptation Task Force, which is charged with developing an adaptation plan for the city.

As part of its mandate to help the city become more resilient to climate change, the NPCC’s first report encourages stakeholders to approach adaptation from a risk management perspective, leading to the development of what is called “flexible adaptation pathways”—strategies that can evolve through time along with the needs of the city and climate change impacts.

The report includes a set of climate projections for the New York City region, an examination of how climate change may affect critical infrastructure, and overviews of legal and insurance perspectives on adaptation. In addition, NPCC members created three workbooks to help guide decision makers as they incorporate climate change considerations into their organization’s planning.

NPCC co-chair Cynthia Rosenzweig, scientist with Columbia’s Center for Climate Systems Research and head of the Climate Impacts Group at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, both part of the Earth Institute, says that the primary goal of the report’s recommendations is to help to lay the foundation for climate change adaptation in the city, based on scientific research and climate projections for the area.

“We developed projections that are specific to the New York City region. We took all the global climate models—about 18 of them—and we looked to see what they are projecting for New York City,” said Rosenzweig. “First of all, the issue is often called global warming because it will be hotter, up to 5 degrees hotter by 2050. What people really react to is heat waves, and they are very likely to become more frequent.” According to NPCC analysis, the city may experience a four-fold increase of 90-degree-plus days by the end of the century, which has the potential to affect public health and infrastructure such as electricity demand and transmission and water supply.

Using climate models, NPCC researchers also predict that New Yorkers can expect to see at least two feet of sea level rise by the 2080s as a result of climate change. “Keeping a close eye on melting from the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, we project that rapid melt could lead us to what we call a ‘rapid ice-melt scenario,’—an increase of up to four feet in sea level by the end of the century.” According to the report, such increases pose significant risks to low-lying neighborhoods and infrastructure, threats to consistent delivery of water supplies, increased structural damage, and impaired operations.

While it is difficult for scientists to know with absolute certainty just how climate change will affect the city, preparing for this uncertainty is a central part of helping make the city more resilient to whatever impacts may come.

Based on its analysis, NPCC members offer policy recommendations to lay the groundwork for a comprehensive, risk- and science-based adaptation program, including the establishment of a climate change monitoring program to track and analyze key climate change factors, impacts, and adaptation indicators in New York City and a partnership with the insurance industry to facilitate the use of risk-sharing mechanisms.

“The NPCC report reflects a maturation of how we look at climate change—it’s no longer something that will appear only sometime in the distant future,” said William Solecki, NPCC co-chair and head of the Institute for Sustainable Cities at The City University of New York. “Climate change is here, and it’s going to be here for the foreseeable future.”

A preview and discussion of the report was held Dec. 2. Hosted by the New York City Panel on Climate Change, The New York Academy of Sciences, Columbia University and CUNY, the discussion highlighted the findings and recommendations of the report.

New maps put 25,000 residents of New York's Long Island in flood zones

New York Newsday: More than 25,000 Long Island homeowners may have to buy flood insurance that costs up to $2,000 because their homes are in newly designated flood-prone areas in federal maps that go into effect next month.

However, the homeowners can reduce the cost of a flood policy by buying coverage before Sept. 11 in Nassau and Sept. 25 in Suffolk — when the new Federal Emergency Management Agency maps become official. For those who meet the deadlines, the rates should be less than $400 per year, which buys $250,000 in coverage for the house and $100,000 for its contents, said Denis Miller, a local expert on the subject and owner of Denis A. Miller Insurance in Long Beach.

Congress ordered FEMA to redraw the maps — and about 25,000 homes in Nassau and 325 in Suffolk have been reclassified into floodplain areas. Most of the homes moved into flood areas are in southern portions of Nassau County, and insurance brokers and government officials are trying to get the word out to homeowners who have not been notified by their lenders.

…Congress ordered FEMA to redraw its maps, based on updated topographical information on the “flood plain” — the normally dry areas where water will accumulate or flow during a 100-year flood event, such as that hurricane that ravaged portions of Long Island in September 1938….

Island Park on Long Island was destroyed by a breaker with a reported height of 30 to 40 feet. The New England Hurricane of 1938 traveled 600 miles in 12 hours, surprising southern New England and causing widespread destruction. In: The New England Hurricane, Federal Writers' Project of WPA, 1938.