Note: These essays are part of a Rutgers University project in which their experts weigh-in on how action driven by science, policy, engineering and planning could future-proof the Garden State. To read more about Rutgers' work on this issue, visit impact.rutgers.edu/the-rising-tide.
It’s 2050 and the sea level along New Jersey’s oceanfront and bays is 1.5 feet higher than it was at the turn of the century.
That may not sound like much, but it’s a major increase considering the daily high tides and occasional hurricanes and nor’easters that flood low-lying areas with storm surges, pounding surf and powerful winds. It’s enough to make the most severe flood that happens in a typical year a permanent state of affairs.
Traci Daberko for Rutgers University
And the water will keep rising.
By 2100, the sea level could be 2 feet to 8 feet higher in the Garden State, depending on the trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions from human activity and how polar ice sheets respond in the coming decades. Those water levels would permanently inundate many coastal lands and wetlands. Still, government, businesses and residents can take steps to adapt to sea-level rise, increased flooding and growing storm threats.
Rutgers experts are providing sound science and evidence-based recommendations on how to be more resilient to these climate change-related impacts. In the following four essays, Rutgers experts share their insights from science, planning and policy, engineering and sociological perspectives. They have also developed or contributed to many online resilience tools to help New Jersey, counties, towns, businesses and residents adapt to the rising tide.
NJ Flood Mapper/NJ.com staff
HOW HIGH WILL THE SEA RISE?
Since 1900, global average sea level has risen about 8 inches. In New Jersey, sea level has risen even faster – about 1.4 feet over that same period. This is primarily because the land here is sinking, due to both natural forces – the land was pushed up by a giant ice sheet 20,000 years ago and is now relaxing downward – and to groundwater pumping.
Geological records from salt marshes in New Jersey and other sites around the world demonstrate the extraordinary nature of the 20th century rise in sea level: Both in the global average and locally, it was faster than over any comparable period in at least 3,000 years. And this rise is accelerating due to a warming ocean, melting mountain glaciers and shrinking polar ice sheets.
We are already feeling the effects of sea-level rise. A higher sea means it takes less of a tide or a storm to cause coastal flooding. Sea-level rise has increased the frequency of minor tidal flooding in shore communities about 20-fold since the 1950s. And it exposed about 40,000 New Jerseyans to Superstorm Sandy’s floodwaters who would not have otherwise been affected.
-- Robert Kopp, Karl Nordstrom, Johnny Quispe
Read their complete essay.
Andrew Mills | NJ.com
HOW TO SAVE NEW JERSEY FROM THE RISING TIDE
As we approach the seventh anniversary of Superstorm Sandy, we are asked – as we have been every autumn since 2012 -- "Are we better prepared for the next Sandy?" Our answer: In some places and with respect to some structures and systems, we probably are, but in many others we are not or we won't know until the next big storm.
We have been working together on issues related to preparedness in the face of sea-level rise in New Jersey since before Superstorm Sandy, but that seminal event provided an opportunity to further our applied research and advance a dialogue on an issue that, even post-Sandy, some policymakers and elected officials still shy away from.
Traci Daberko for Rutgers University
Rutgers, with a mission of service to New Jersey, is in a unique position to provide continuity to address the factual realities of climate change independent of politics. As “pracademics” – or academicians who also are practitioners – we translate science to inform policy and action for local communities as well as specific sectors of society that are affected by sea-level rise.
-- Marjorie Kaplan, Lisa Auermuller and Jeanne Herb
Read their complete essay.
Michael Mancuso | For NJ.com
HERE'S HOW WE CAN ADAPT
In New Jersey's effort to adapt to rising sea levels, we are facing infrastructure challenges on two fronts – structural deterioration and environmental change. This is the time for us to tackle both fronts together by replacing or retrofitting the aged infrastructure into a resilient one, preferably through mobile and green means.
First, nuisance flooding during high tides even when there is no rainfall as has already happened in low-lying coastal areas in New Jersey and elsewhere.
Second, saltwater intrusion into aquifers that threatens the potable water supply.
Traci Daberko for Rutgers University
Third, more frequent and severe flooding during rainfall events as the urban storm drainage systems and/or rivers are backed up by the higher sea level.
And fourth, higher levels of water, flooding and erosion during hurricanes and nor’easters as the storm surge is superimposed on a higher sea level, among other consequences.
-- Qizhong (George) Guo
Read his complete essay.
NJ.com file photo
HOW DO WE GET OUT OF HARM'S WAY?
New Jerseyans have long adapted to change along coastal rivers and ocean shorelines, and they continue to adapt today. The question now is whether we expect people who live and work near the shore to pay most of the costs of adapting, including the costs of moving away when that seems the best choice.
People in our state have accepted hazards as the price of living near water. The indigenous Lenape peoples, who lived in New Jersey well into the colonial period, took advantage of near-shore fisheries during the summer and moved back inland as the seasons changed.
Understanding the benefits of that seasonal pattern lessened over time. Early European settlers appreciated coastal threats, but they soon built ports and settlements. Since then, coastal settlements have been periodically devastated by storm surges and winds. New Jersey is now experiencing a rise in relative sea levels more quickly than nearly any other place on earth, speeding up this pattern of devastation.
-- Karen O'Neill
Read her complete essay.
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