The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has just released a map with the remarkable ability to predict what the future holds, but it’s not good news.
According to the map, there is a high possibility that parts of New York will soon be submerged in water because of rising sea levels directly linked to climate change. Scientists have known for some time now that many parts of the US could soon deal with massive flooding as ocean levels rise, and this latest map shows how badly it will affect some areas of New York.
Sea Levels Bound To Cause Massive Flooding
While the world deals with climate change, another problem is brewing — rising sea levels. Many projections have been made about how high the water levels will increase, with experts claiming that residents up and down the eastern seaboard will experience massive flooding in their cities and towns.
What the Future Holds For New York
The new NOAA map forecasts a grim future for New York, as it is one state in the country that will likely be hit the hardest if the scenarios painted by the map come to pass. If sea levels rise to unseen heights in the next 100 years, parts of the state may be able to survive. However, other areas will take massive hits, and they may be unable to recover.
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Exploring Various Possibilities
The new map that has experts worried was created using NOAA’s Sea Level Rise Viewer. This tool creates different scenarios of sea level rise in the future and allows users to see it unfold. This means that a user gets to see both the best-case scenario and the worst-case scenario. It also enables you to see how this rise in ocean waters will change up to the year 2100.
Places in New York in the Most Danger
The new map viewer has shown that Long Island’s southern coast is the most vulnerable and will have the highest risk in future decades. According to the map, sea levels will rise and swallow up most of the area’s land mass. Naturally, this means that areas around Long Island are also at risk, as much of the region is predicted to be completely submerged in the worst-case scenarios.
Places Most Likely To Survive
As earlier stated, some areas in New York may survive the coming disaster. These places include Manhattan, Montauk, and New Rochelle. According to the map, these areas may see a mere 2.49-foot increase by 2100 in the best-case scenarios. Unfortunately, the worst-case scenarios are not very encouraging, and most see these areas struggling under a possible 6.66-foot rise that will leave much of them flooded.
An Uncertain Future
The map’s predictions clearly show that any area close to the sea—especially islands like Long Island—is at great risk and will be faced with the most dangerous situations in all worst-case scenarios. Even landlocked areas that only have inland streams and rivers are projected to end up submerged in worst-case scenarios. As such, various parts of New York have an uncertain future due to rising sea levels.
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More Effects of Climate Change
The grim news of New York’s uncertain future comes as various countries deal with extreme temperatures. Sadly, scientists have attributed the increasing temperature to human-caused climate change. In parts of the US, a heat dome is causing heat waves so extreme that some administrations have had to sound a warning, urging people to take care when they go outdoors. However, the country has it relatively better compared to some parts of Europe and the Middle East, where excessive heat waves have taken hundreds of lives.
Why Are Sea Levels Rising?
According to experts, climate change is directly linked to rising sea levels. As things heat up due to the uncharacteristic warmer weather around the world, ocean temperatures also rise, which causes glaciers to melt. Glaciers are basically frozen lakes, and when they melt, sea levels around the world increase.
Sweet Has Bitter News
NOAA’s oceanographer William Sweet recently revealed what all of this means for the future of coastlines in the US while also sharing reasons why sea levels may rise. According to Sweet, increasing atmospheric and ocean heating is happening at an unprecedented rate due to increased carbon emissions. This has led to the melting of land-based ice sheets and glaciers, which trigger thermal expansion of the ocean, subsequently causing the coastal sea levels to rise along most of the country’s coastlines. In simpler terms, the future looks grim for areas straddling the sea.
Florida Also At Risk
New York is not the only state hit hard by rising sea levels in the next century. According to expert forecasts, Florida is also at risk. South Florida will reportedly see a sea level rise of about two feet by 2050, which is bad news as some areas of South Florida have already been grappling with floods during periods of high sea tides and heavy rainstorms.
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The Doomsday Glacier
As if news of a detrimental sea level rise is not enough, scientists recently revealed that their calculations may be off where melting glaciers are concerned and how they affect sea levels. Many now suspect glaciers may be melting more rapidly than initially believed. This assumption is based on research on Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier, also known as the “Doomsday Glacier,” named so because it’s the world’s widest glacier. New data has shown that this glacier might be melting faster than was anticipated, meaning we may not even have decades.
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