From today's Record:
Warming will raise sea levels, recede coast Monday, November 17, 2008
BY JENNIFER H. CUNNINGHAMSTAFF WRITER, HERALD NEWS
http://www.northjersey.com/environment/Redrawing_NJs_map.html New Jersey's densely populated coastline is in danger of becoming vastly altered because sea levels are rising — triggered by the world's glaciers melting at the fastest rate ever recorded, a leading glaciologist has concluded.
Rising global temperatures, caused in part by greenhouse gas emissions, are precipitating the glacial melt, which will add 3 feet to the world's sea levels by 2100 if remedial action isn't taken now, said Lonnie G. Thompson, a world-renowned expert on glaciers and professor at Ohio State University.
At state and federal levels, officials are working to stem the glacial melt through legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. President-elect Barack Obama has pledged to cut America's greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050 using methods including a cap and trade program in which businesses are given a pollution allowance and must buy credits from other businesses to be permitted to discharge more pollutants.
Global warming, or the rise in the world's temperature, has the potential to dramatically alter New Jersey's landscape and environment. Besides the projected sea level rise, global warming is expected to cause more deaths from heat and smog in cities, make the state more susceptible to storm surges and floods, and cause an influx of non-native animals and plants.
By the end of the 21st century, Thompson predicts, the global temperature will rise by 3 degrees Celsius, triggering a glacial melt that will envelop sections of North Jersey, including Edgewater, Hoboken, Jersey City, Liberty State Park, Bayonne,
the Meadowlands, Newark, Newark Liberty International Airport, Carteret and Roselle.
Passaic County would not be as seriously affected by the sea level rise, but increased flooding of the Passaic River is likely.
Across the Hudson River in New York City, chunks of both lower and upper Manhattan would disappear underwater, along with portions of eastern Staten Island, southern Brooklyn and Queens, according to Thompson.
The rise in sea levels would make the New Jersey coastline more susceptible to storm surges from floods and hurricanes. During most of the 20th century, sea levels rose by about 2 millimeters, Thompson said.
The last time the world's temperature was 3 degrees Celsius warmer than it is today was 3 million years ago, when sea levels were between 65 and 98 feet higher, Thompson said.
During the last 100 years, the world's temperature rose 0.74 degrees Celsius, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an international group of government officials and scientists who are working to understand and mitigate climate change. The 20th century was the warmest in the last millennium, Thompson said.
"What we're really concerned about is where we're projected to be in a business-as-usual model, Thompson said last month at the McCormick Conference on Climate Change at Ohio State University in Columbus. "That would change the geography of our planet as we know it. Where we end up ... depends on the future energy policies of this nation and the world."
Thompson has spent the past 32 years studying glaciers around the world, drilling and analyzing glacial ice cores. He used a computer model to predict how New Jersey's coastline would appear if sea levels rose.
Thompson is not alone in his glacial melt contention. In a report released last year, the IPCC predicted glacial melts caused by rising temperatures were likely contributing to the rise in sea levels. By 2099, the IPCC predicted, sea levels would rise between 7 inches and 23 inches.
On Thursday, the U.N. Environmental Program reported that clouds of soot, chemicals and particles, known as atmospheric brown clouds, had blanketed parts of Asia and Africa and were contributing to the melting of glaciers as well.
Global warming caused Arctic Sea ice to decline by 9 percent every year from 1979 to 2006, and then by another 24 percent from 2006 to 2007, according to data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
The glaciers have been melting so rapidly, Thompson said, within the next 30 years, there will be no glaciers left in Montana's Glacier National Park.
"In the big scheme of things," Thompson said, "the Earth is warming and the glaciers are retreating."
In Greenland, glacial retreats are accelerated by summer melts that create lakes in the glaciers, Thompson said. Water seeps down into the glacier's foundation, further destabilizing the glacier.
All of the world's tropical glaciers, found in mountainous countries like Peru, Tibet and Tanzania, are melting, Thompson said.
"Glaciers, especially tropical glaciers, are canaries in the coal mine for our global climate system," he said.
Glaciers are important not only because they store large amounts of the world's fresh water, but also because glacial ice cores record climate changes and preserve ancient plant and animal remains.
"These glaciers provide a history of the past planet," Thompson said. "The history is written in the ice."
Obama has said he is in favor of investing in renewable energy sources and creating a "Global Energy Forum" with the world's largest greenhouse gas producers. The forum would work to solve global energy and environmental issues, according to the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.
New Jersey has launched its own plan to combat climate change. In 2007, Gov. Jon S. Corzine signed the Global Warming Response Act, which mandates a 20 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 and an 80 percent reduction below 2006 levels by 2050. Last month, Corzine introduced the state's energy master plan, which calls for the use of renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar power, to account for 30 percent of New Jersey's needs in 12 years.
It sets the goal of reducing energy consumption by 20 percent by 2020 through stringent building codes that promote energy efficiency and possibly charging more for electricity use during peak hours.
The state also is investigating the feasibility of carbon sequestration — storing carbon dioxide underground — as a method to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
Last month, at the Rutgers Energy Institute's Carbon Capture and Sequestration Conference, university scientists, along with officials from the state Department of Environmental Protection, announced they will assess how well carbon sequestration would work in the Garden State.
"To get to the more aggressive goals of 2050, this [carbon sequestration] needs to be possible," said Karl Muessig, a geologist from the state Geological Survey. "We need to take the carbon dioxide we generate and take it out of the system."
But even once plans to stem greenhouse gas emissions are enacted, the world's glaciers will keep on melting because carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for decades after it is released and will continue to affect the world's temperature, the experts say.
"Glaciers [are] our most visible evidence of global warming," Thompson said. "This is a very clear and present danger. It's happening right now."
Reach Jennifer H. Cunningham at 973-569-7162 or cunningham@northjersey.com.