89th American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting

Thursday, 15 January 2009: 11:45 AM
Climate Change Scenarios for the New York Metropolitan Region
Room 121A (Phoenix Convention Center)
Cynthia Rosenzweig, NASA/GISS and the Columbia Earth Institute, New York, NY; and R. M. Horton
The New York Metropolitan Region faces a variety of climate risks in the coming decades. This presentation will outline these risks, within a risk management framework we have developed. We will first outline background climate and weather risks faced by the City today. We next describe our use of downscaled ensembles of Global Climate Models and Greenhouse Gas Emissions Scenarios to characterize the range of likely changes in mean temperature and precipitation over the 21st Century. We then describe possible changes in extreme events such as heat waves, intense precipitation, droughts, and storm surge flooding. Multiple approaches to the question of sea level rise will also be described, and estimates provided. Key impacts of these climate changes will be touched upon, as will the range of climate change adaptation strategies being considered to keep New York City resilient for the rest of this century.

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