Archinect - News

Miami Beach preservationists sound the alarm over concerning new building safety law

2024-03-26T15:04:00-04:00

The New York Times has picked a side in the fight between Miami Beach historic preservation advocates and developers supporting the recently signed Resiliency and Safe Structures Act, a law those in the former category claim will augment a devastating erasure of the local architecture character over time.

The rift that has for years played out amidst a backdrop that includes the tragedy at Surfside and a spate of new starchitect-designed developments on the nine-mile island has recent salients in the demolished Deauville Beach Hotel and the yet-decided fate of Miami Marine Stadium.

Advocates say the new law is a guise that uses climate change and building safety as its premise to usher in what is, in reality, a slate of insidious and destructive requirements. The Commercial Observer said they also work to "hamstring the powers of municipalities to dictate what can replace demolished structures."

Pratt Institute launches new Center for Climate Adaptation aimed at researching resiliency solutions for island cities

2024-03-13T14:28:00-04:00

Pratt Institute has announced the creation of the new Center for Climate Adaptation (CCA). The initiative is part of its alignment with The New York Climate Exchange, a consortium of research institutions that will use Governor’s Island as its hub for climate change investigations and education. David Erdman, an associate professor in the Graduate Architecture and Urban Design (GAUD) program, will lead the center as its first Director.

Pratt says the new CCA is aimed partially at protecting global island cities such as New York and Singapore. The focus expands on the United Nations Archipelago Agenda and will include experts taken from every subfield of architecture and urban design. Pace University and Singapore University of Technology and Design have signed on as academic partners in the initiative as well.

The school's President, Frances Bronet, stated: “The Center combines our deep engagement with the local community and global networks, and our collaborative approach to critic...

San Francisco is at dire risk for flooding without water infrastructure upgrades, according to a new report

2023-07-10T14:35:00-04:00

In addition to overall wetter conditions, the study predicts increasingly intense bursts of heavy rain during storms — up to two-thirds wetter by the end of the century — the type of brief torrents that can easily overwhelm sewer systems, swamp cars and cause significant property damage and even loss of life, said Michael Mak, a Pathways water resources engineer.

Mayor London Breed announced a $369 million Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act loan a month before the report was made public courtesy of KQED’s public records request. The report indicates a 37% increase in stormwater by the end of the century. Meanwhile, the city’s 3,400-strong stock of aging concrete buildings (a portion of which were actually built after 2000) is also in dire need of mass seismic retrofits, as the USGS says San Francisco faces a 20% risk of a 7.5 magnitude earthquake or higher occurring within the next 30 years.

For San Francisco-related weather and infrastructure news, explore previously reported coverage on Archinect below:

Boston needs a $877 million flood barrier by 2070, according to Arup

2023-06-08T17:21:00-04:00

Arup has recommended enacting a new 1.5-mile-long protective wall following the results of a new study calling for an $877 million flood barrier protecting the central waterfront of Downtown Boston.

The recommendations call for a barrier to be put in place between Christopher Columbus Park and Congress Street in order to protect the city’s commercial, historic, and governmental structures from the devastating effects caused by an anticipated 51-inch rise in sea level that could cause some $3.9 billion in damages by the year 2070.

“It’s a really, really scary report to be honest,” Marc Margulies, principal of Boston-based architecture firm Margulies Perruzzi, told Banker & Tradesman. “Nobody wants to do this. Nobody wants to spend the money on it. But we have to do this.”

Previously on Archinect: Boston architects create a waterfront hotel with permeable ground floor to prepare for sea level rise

The report indicated City Hall could be susceptible to flood damage, which would also dev...

New York City is actually sinking under the weight of its skyscrapers

2023-05-22T13:57:00-04:00

New York City is sinking under the weight of its skyscrapers, new research shows, which could put its population of more than 8 million people at an increased risk of coastal flooding. [...] Researchers estimated the weight of all of New York City’s buildings to be around 842 million tons. But to find the areas more vulnerable to sinking — or, as they call it in more scientific terms, “subsidence” — a key factor to consider was the type of soil beneath the buildings.

A new study authored by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) found the city to be sinking at a rate of between 1 to 2 millimeters per year, while parts of Lower Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island are subsiding at a rate of 2.75 millimeters. This comes at a time when planning officials, architects, and building owners are scrambling to adapt to the shrinking office market accelerated by the pandemic.

The increased flood risk, enhanced by construction densification, is particularly dangerous to coastal cities whose clay-rich soil causes “material softness and ability to flow under pressure,” according to the study.

Busan to take the lead in trying on Bjarke Ingels' floating OCEANIX CITY prototype in 2025

2021-11-30T09:00:00-05:00

In an effort to mitigate the impending effects of sea-level rise on coastal populations through architecture, UN-Habitat and OCEANIX are once again taking the lead with a new prototype for a floating settlement in the South Korean city of Busan.

The buzzworthy pair had previously made waves with a Bjarke Ingels-backed 2019 proposal for a floodproof habitat which has now officially found a home thanks to a groundbreaking agreement with the city’s government.

Now, with almost 50 centimeters of sea-level rise expected for the southern peninsula by mid-century, leaders in South Korea look to the prototype as a guide to extreme adaptation efforts that could help circumvent the challenges caused by an influx of coastal city dwellers overrunning a country of 52 million whose total land area is roughly equivalent to the state of Indiana.

Previously on Archinect: Bjarke Ingels presents utopian plan for sustainable floating cities to UN

The city proposal claims to be designed to withstand a...

It turns out seawalls might not be the most thought-out way to address sea level rise

2021-07-20T17:08:00-04:00

As the world heats up and sea levels rise, communities in the U.S. could spend more than $400 billion on seawalls to try to hold the ocean back over the next couple of decades. But there’s a catch: Building a seawall in one area can often mean that flooding gets even worse in another neighborhood or city nearby.

A new paper from The Natural Capital Project at Stanford University that examines how seawalls might impact California's Bay Area was published this spring, adding to a slate of similar scholarship surrounding seawalls that have cropped up in recent years. Other efforts have seen a vigorous public pushback where proposed.

Cities like New York and Copenhagen have mulled plans for expensive sea walls that may in the end be inadequate. Some have pointed to the damaging effects on beaches as potential non-starters.

Fast Company has more on the encroaching issue here.

Miami’s $4 billion plan to combat sea level rise has radical urban ideas

2021-06-01T11:43:00-04:00

The City of Miami has published a draft of its Stormwater Master Plan; a $3.8 billion plan to be enacted over the next 40 years, seeking to mitigate the impact of rising sea levels on the city. The plan sets out a wide portfolio of measures, from stormwater pumps and sea walls to more novel approaches such as floating neighborhoods and streets converted into canals.

The report sets out both short and long-term strategies for the city’s defense from rising sea levels. Near-term resiliency measures, with a 20-to-50-year planning horizon, include both structural and non-structural actions, encompassing everything from infrastructure construction to reformed insurance models. The plan proposes an upgrade to building code strategies, including minimum structure finish-floor levels informed by predicted water surface levels, and a requirement for piled or stilted structures, both buildings and roadways, to consider future sea level rise.

Previously on Archinect: Rising sea levels threa...

Disclosing flood risk on real estate websites remains controversial

2020-08-26T12:46:00-04:00

Realtor.com has become the first site to disclose information about a home's flood risk and how climate change could increase that risk in the coming decades, potentially signaling a major shift in consumers' access to information about climate threats. [...] Still, other websites such as Redfin, Zillow and Trulia have no plans to share information about flooding with users [...] say home sellers are reluctant to publish flood risk information, since it could decrease their home's value.

Preparing New York City for the next storm

2020-06-29T15:41:00-04:00

June marks the start of hurricane season on the Atlantic Ocean. Even amidst the ravages of a novel coronavirus and state violence, the perils posed by a heating planet are not going away. If the city turned out to be woefully underprepared for a pandemic, what about measures to protect against storms and floods?

Amy Howden-Chapman, co-founder of the climate change and arts platform The Distance Plan, takes a closer look at a variety of climate impact interventions at New York City's most endangered stretches of coastline: from Lower Manhattan and the Lower East Side, Red Hook, Rockaway Boardwalk, all the way to Sunset Cove Park at Jamaica Bay.

"[...] new infrastructures of defense — some military in provenance, some providing a softer transition to higher waters — are already transforming daily life," Howden-Chapman writes in her piece for Urban Omnibus.

The case for pitting big infrastructure against climate change

2020-01-22T15:26:00-05:00

The US has become terrible at building big things, and negligent in even maintaining our existing infrastructure. [...] That all bodes terribly for our ability to grapple with the coming dangers of climate change, because it is fundamentally an infrastructure problem.

MIT Technology Review senior editor, James Temple, penned an urgent plea for a renewed, but sustainable, American public works boom that could significantly speed up the painfully slow infrastructure planning process in the face of rapidly changing climate conditions.

"To prepare for the climate dangers we now can’t avoid, we’ll also need to bolster coastal protections, reengineer waste and water systems, reinforce our transportation infrastructure, and relocate homes and businesses away from expanding flood and fire zones," Temple writes. "Given those staggering costs and tight time lines, we can’t afford to take decades to build—much less not build—a single project."

Greenland is melting

2019-08-02T14:52:00-04:00

More than 11 billion tons of ice was lost to the oceans by surface melt on Wednesday alone, creating a net mass ice loss of some 217 billion tons from Greenland in July. The scope of Wednesday’s ice melt is a number difficult to grasp. To understand just how much ice is being lost, a mere 1 billion tons—or 1 gigaton—of ice loss is equivalent to about 400,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools, the Danish Meteorological Institute said.

The Associated Press reports that a summer heatwave that recently scorched Europe has moved north to Greenland, where the elevated temperatures have produced record glacial melt.

While 82-percent of Greenland is covered in ice, nearly 60-percent of the island's total ice sheet is showing signs of melting, a record high, the Danish Meteorological Institute tells The Associated Press.

According to the institute's Ruth Mottram, a climate scientist, global sea levels are due to rise .01-inch for every 110 billion tons of ice melt that occurs on the continent.

Is Greenland melting before our eyes? It looks like yes.

New report urges Venice to get its climate change act together

2019-07-17T07:00:00-04:00

Venice is full of water, Venice floods, the climate is visibly changing, and sea levels are rising, so you would expect Venice, of all places, to have an official strategy for what to do about it—but you would be wrong. The management plans produced by the City of Venice for Unesco in 2013 and 2018 barely mention the subject and twice, in 2016 and 2019, Unesco’s World Heritage Committee has failed to call them out on this astonishing failing.

"We are used to thinking that, given enough will and money, there is a solution to everything, but this report says that we must get used to the idea that in many cases there will be no solution," writes a frustrated Anna Somers Cocks for The Art Newspaper and explains how a new report by the International Council on Museums and Sites (Icomos) could lay out an urgently needed roadmap for climate change action for cultural heritage sites. "It emphasises again and again: collaborate, share knowledge and remedies, educate, and—above all—plan ahead. Then only may we be able to mitigate the approaching catastrophe."

In other recent Venice-related news: the 17th International Architecture Exhibition just announced a guiding vision for the 2020 Venice Biennale.

In a watery future, will islands build themselves?

2019-07-12T10:22:00-04:00

MIT’s Self Assembly Lab and Maldives-based Invena have unveiled Growing Islands, a provocative underwater structural system that redirects wave energy and sand accumulation flows to build new islands and help rebuild existing beaches ravaged by rising sea levels.

Diagram showcasing the basic conceptual approach behind the approach. Image courtesy of Self-Assembly Lab, MIT Sarah Yasmin Dole, Hassan Maahee Ahmed Maniku.

The decidedly low-tech scheme deploys a series of submerged concrete ramps to create turbulent eddies along the ocean floor that can generate the conditions necessary for sediment deposit. Over time, the designers argue, sediment will build up enough to potentially offset some of the effects of rising sea levels on island and coastal environments.

In a statement announcing the project, MIT researchers said, "We are designing, building, and deploying, submersible devices that, based simply on their geometry and orientation, can function as adaptable artificial reefs."...

As the rising Pacific slowly swallows California's beaches, managed retreat becomes a dividing topic in coastal cities

2019-07-09T08:00:00-04:00

While other regions grappled with destructive waves and rising seas, the West Coast for decades was spared by a rare confluence of favorable winds and cooler water. This “sea level rise suppression,” as scientists call it, went largely undetected. [...] But lines in the sand are meant to shift. In the last 100 years, the sea rose less than 9 inches in California. By the end of this century, the surge could be greater than 9 feet.

In her LA Times long read, Rosanna Xia tells the tale of coastal cities up and down the Golden State and their increasing struggles to defend beaches, infrastructure, and (mostly pricey) properties against the rising sea that relentlessly chews away on a coastline many perceived as permanent.

"Retreat is as un-American as it gets, neighborhood groups declared. To win, California must defend," Xia writes. "But at what cost? Should California become one long wall of concrete against the ocean? Will there still be sandy beaches or surf breaks to cherish in the future, oceanfront homes left to dream about? More than $150 billion in property could be at risk of flooding by 2100 — the economic damage far more devastating than the state’s worst earthquakes and wildfires."

Bill de Blasio proposes Manhattan shoreline extension to combat projected sea level rise

2019-03-18T14:40:00-04:00

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio proposed a $10 billion plan to push out the lower Manhattan coastline as much as 500 feet, or two city blocks, to protect from flooding that’s expected to become more frequent as global temperatures rise. [...] Portions of the extended land would be at 20 feet above sea level. The city can’t build flood protection on the existing land because it’s too crowded with utilities, sewers and subway lines, he said.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio has unveiled the city's comprehensive plan to increase resilience in Lower Manhattan, a low-lying, highly critical area that has proven to be vulnerable to storm surges and flooding. The newly published Lower Manhattan Climate Resilience Study recommends extending the Manhattan shoreline into the East River to better protect the Seaport and the Financial District.

Lower Manhattan 100-Year Floodplains. Image: NYC Mayor’s Office

“Hurricane Sandy showed us how vulnerable areas like Lower Manhattan are to climate change,” said de Blasio in his public announcement. “That’s why we not only have to reduce emissions to prevent the most cataclysmic potential effects of global warming, we have to prepare for the ones that are already inevitable. Our actions will protect Lower Manhattan into the next century. We need the federal government to stand behind cities like New York to meet this crisis head on.”

Click image above to access the Lower Manhattan Climate Resi...

Why is Florida's coastal real estate still booming despite rising levels?

2019-02-20T13:49:00-05:00

In Florida, you will see a bewildering mix of optimism, opportunism and denial in the real estate market: luxury condominiums going up in flood-prone South Beach, and property values rising in the vulnerable Keys, post-Hurricane Irma. And though the House of Representatives passed a bill to require real estate agents to disclose flood risks, the Senate has not reviewed it, and a culture of “systemic, fraudulent nondisclosure” persists in high flood risk areas.

As part of her Climate Changed series for The Guardian, Megan Mayhew Bergman investigates the reluctance of Florida's condominium boom (and the wealthy investors behind it) to cool it a bit on new developments in the face of projected climate change-related devastation.

"Humans tend to respond to immediate threats and financial consequences – and coastal real estate, especially in Florida, may be on the cusp of delivering that harsh wake-up call," writes Mayhew Bergman. "The peninsula has outsized exposure: nearly 2 million people live in coastal cities. On the list of the 20 urban areas in America that will suffer the most from rising seas, Florida has five: St Petersburg, Tampa, Miami, Miami Beach and Panama City. In 2016, Zillow predicted that one out of eight homes in Florida would be underwater by 2100, a loss of $413bn in property."

'Deep adaptation' in the face of planetary climate catastrophe

2018-10-02T18:36:00-04:00

In the language of climate change, “adaptation” refers to ways to blunt the immediate effects of extreme weather, such as building seawalls, conserving drinking water, updating building codes, and helping more people get disaster insurance. [...] But some researchers are going further, calling for what some call the “deep adaptation agenda.”

Bloomberg's Climate & Environment Reporter, Christopher Flavelle, lays out a range of climate change projections—from the general consensus to the more pessimistic—and how an array of 'deep adaptation' measures could help to mitigate the damage. "Rather than simply asking people to water their lawns less often [...]," Flavelle writes, "governments need to consider large-scale, decades-long infrastructure projects, such as transporting water to increasingly arid regions and moving cities away from the ocean."

Porous interventions to adapt to increasing floods in Bangkok

2018-03-05T16:12:00-05:00

Sea level rise and increased rain have posed serious flood risks for Bangkok, the capital city of Thailand, which is already close to sea level. [...] She works to do this by reclaiming urban porosity through a network of public green spaces. [...] She has already been planning and working on projects beyond climate resilient housing - including rain gardens, green roofs, permeable parking, urban forests and farms - to address the root causes of increased flooding in her city.

After witnessing a dramatic economic boom and rapid urbanization—and subsequent environmental challenges—in her native Thailand, Harvard graduate, landscape architect and TED fellow Kotchakorn Voraakhom founded Porous City Network to fight the increased risk of flooding with design solutions and improve urban resilience and adaptability in Bangkok, primarily in the city's most vulnerable communities: "PCN makes the city porous by transforming underused impervious surfaces into a system of productive public green spaces, and advocating maintaining threatened landscape infrastructure like agricultural land, canals, and ditch orchards, which help mitigate excess water."

Pier 40 concept envisions an offshore apartment complex in Chelsea that allows for sea-level rise

2018-02-12T20:21:00-05:00

Local multidisciplinary creative firm DFA has come up with a concept for the rehabilitation of Chelsea's rapidly disintegrating Pier 40 that would provide housing and other services but would also adapt to the predicted rising sea levels of future NYC. The future-proof housing, commercial, and recreation complex would rise from the Hudson River and be able to remain above water in the event of rising sea levels while addressing the city’s dire need for affordable housing.

Renderings courtesy of DFA

Star-studded design competition seeks to make Bay Area a model for shoreline resiliency

2017-09-13T15:55:00-04:00

San Francisco is one of the many cities in the U.S. threatened by climate change. Scientific projections predict that sea level rise is likely to push tides upwards with accelerating force in the coming decades and a 2012 study estimated that the average high tide within San Francisco Bay could be 66 inches higher by 2100.

Seeking to face the threat of rising sea levels head on, a group of community, industry and government leaders have launched a new competition in the Bay Area that seeks to restore shoreline resiliency, the phrase encompassing techniques that resist rising tides while at the same time providing ecological benefits. Think approaches like planting natural buffers such as eelgrass, which help absorb the shock of storm surges as oceans rise—a challenge that hard structures can't easily meet—while also luring water bugs, fish, birds, and shell reefs that support native oysters.

Ibises, roseate spoonbills, and egrets at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. Found v...

The absorbing design of China's anti-flood "sponge cities"

2016-10-11T13:08:00-04:00

Is flood mitigation the new frontier in urban planning? China, whose urban centers have regularly been experiencing infrastructure-shuttering floods, is actively encouraging its metropolises to start reshaping themselves to handle the new reality via the so-called "sponge city" program. As an article in The Guardian notes:

The sponge city programme takes inspiration from low impact development in the US, water sensitive urban design in Australia and sustainable drainage systems in the UK.

But nothing at this scale has ever been attempted before. “The sponge city programme is more comprehensive and ambitious,” says WenMei Ha, head of the China water management team at Arcadis, an international urban consultancy which was appointed to this plan by the government.

For more on flood mitigation and the entities trying to rise above it:

Introducing Bjarke Ingels' floating student housing, "Urban Rigger"

2016-09-22T12:48:00-04:00

Bjarke Ingels has found the elusive silver lining in global sea level rise and the European affordable housing crisis in the form of "Urban Rigger," a series of inexpensive student housing complexes that are designed to float in the sea, especially in those cities which have dense urban cores next to the waterfront. The idea here is to provide students with affordable digs that are close to class while simultaneously making the most out of changing climate conditions and post-industrial port repurposing. The first complete Urban Rigger has already been assembled in Copenhagen.

According to an article in FastCompany, "Each unit, which can house 12 students at once, is composed of modular shipping containers. These modules are powered by a photovoltaic array and use a heat-exchange system that draws upon the thermal mass of water to warm and cool the interiors. Meanwhile, an aerogel developed by NASA insulates the interiors."

For the latest on Bjarke Ingels:

Play "Arkinoid" arcade o...

Designing around sea-level rise in New York

2016-07-05T17:56:00-04:00

Building walls around a city is an idea that is as old as cities themselves. In the Middle Ages, walls were built to keep out invading armies. Now they are built to keep out Mother Nature. [...] As far as walls go, the Big U is designed to be a nice one ("a wall with benefits," as one urban designer puts it). It was one of the winning proposals in Rebuild by Design, a $930 million competition sponsored by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development...

The article describes New York as having more at stake when it comes to sea-level rise than any other city in the world. A bunch of islands in a coastal estuary, New York is uniquely at risk. And, as the largest financial hub in the world with some of the most expensive real estate in the country, the costs of losing entire neighborhoods, such as that around Wall St., are unfathomable.

For more responses to the risks posed by sea-level rise to New York, check out these links:

Architect turned sea-flooding specialist keeps Panama City afloat

2016-04-21T18:33:00-04:00

Banfield’s dedication to environmental issues was born by chance in 2000, when she moved with her husband and three children to Clayton...Together with Carlos Varela, her legal-minded neighbor, Banfield created a community association to defend the rainforest. She remained on the front lines for years, sacrificed her architectural career and eventually began public campaigns for a variety of environmental causes.

Although the Harvard GSD formed the Office for Urbanization recently to study the effects of sea rise and climate change, Vice Mayor of Panama City Raisa Banfield has taken a more direct approach, physically halting flood-prone projects during construction and connecting with like-minded colleagues around the globe to find solutions.

As the article notes, "As glaciers melt and oceans flow higher, 'sea-level rise is an issue on almost every coast,' says Rosetta Elkin, landscape architect and professor at Harvard University Graduate School of Design. It’s particularly tough in Panama City, because the entire town was built too far to the east, 'where sea levels are precipitously low' — thanks in part to American bases — says Arosemena. As Banfield goes through the rigmarole of finding a solution and calling together a global group of problem-solvers like the Dutch, she may stand a chance at creating some scaffolding for the many other cities that will have to look this same issue in th...

Venice Lagoon declared most endangered heritage site in Europe

2016-03-17T15:37:00-04:00

The Venice Lagoon is the most endangered heritage site in Europe, declared the pan-European heritage organisation Europa Nostra at an event today [...]. Rising sea levels, swelling number of tourists, large cruise ships in the lagoon, the erosion of the sea bed, dredging deeper channels and the lack of an agreed management plan for Venice has created a perfect storm of threats to the city’s preservation.

Previously in the Archinect news:

"King tides" give a glimpse of what the (near) future's rising seas will look like

2016-01-21T12:29:00-05:00

King tides—a type of perigean spring tide (there’s your science jargon)—occur when extra-high tides line up with some other meteorological anomalies. They’re not a huge deal: The water flowing over the seawall is part novelty, part nuisance. But these rare days hint at a new normal, when sea level rise will render current coastlines obsolete [...] On January 21 and 22, the king tide will bring San Francisco’s shoreline about a foot higher than average high tide.

Related:

What the Paris Agreement means for architecture

2015-12-18T13:23:00-05:00

Last weekend in the outskirts of Paris, the rap of a green-tipped gavel announced an historically-unprecedented international climate agreement. A sense of accomplishment suffused the crowds gathered locally and the official statements broadcast globally – President Obama called the deal “a turning point for the world” – but it followed some real moments of tension, as years worth of planning for the COP21 nearly came undone in the face of disputed verbiage and policy.

Now, with the details announced, debate continues over the merits of the “Paris Agreement.” But first it should be noted that it won’t be official until at least 55 of the 195 pledge countries have ratified it, with the 55 ratifiers in turn accounting for at least 55% of global emissions. This pretty much necessitates ratification by the US government, whose Congress is currently run by the Republican party, a majority of whom refute mainstream scientific consensus and deny the existence of anthropogenic climate chang...

Can Silicon Valley save the Bay Area?

2015-11-17T19:09:00-05:00

The subject of a thousand think pieces and endless dinner table conversations, the considerable changes unleashed on the Bay Area by the tech industry over the past few decades are pretty undeniable. An influx of money – and its attendant culture – has remade San Francisco and the valley to its south largely in its own image, and has touched just about every other city in the Bay in some way.

But even bigger changes for the Bay Area are on the horizon, as is made clear in a new "interactive documentary" entitled The Water at Bay. Comprising a map, videos, and text, the website highlights the risks posed to region by rising sea levels, and waCs created in part by a coalition of Silicon Valley business leaders.

Can the same forces blamed for ruining the Bay Area now come to its rescue?

In order to educate local people about the dangers and challenges posed by rising sea levels, the Silicon Valley Leadership Group teamed up with the Bay Area Council and Save the Bay under the banner Our B...

Climate change is increasing the risk of severe flooding in New York

2015-09-28T17:49:00-04:00

Flood risk in New York City has increased in recent decades due to human-caused sea level rise and the related storm surge that occurs during cyclones, according to a new study. Climate change threatens to exacerbate the risk storms pose to the largest city in the United States. [...] “This is going from something you probably won’t see in your lifetime to something you may see several times in your lifetime,” said Andra Reed, a researcher at Penn State University.

According to a report published in the journal PNAS that looked at sediment at different point of the New Jersey shore, before 1800, a flood that rose 7.4 ft above sea level would occur about once every 500 years.

Now – or, more precisely, since 1970 – we can expect a storm like that to hit the Big Apple every 24 years.

Between 850 CE and 1800, there was a slight, natural, and gradual rise in sea levels. But in the last few decades, sea level has risen an average of 2 millimeters per year.

According to Time, "Nearly 90% of that rise has been the result of human activity."