Northeast faces flood risks from global warming

NEW YORK (Reuters) – New York’s Wall Street, Boston’s historic areas and Atlantic City’s casinos may all suffer frequent devastating flooding by the end of the century unless the world sharply cuts greenhouse emissions, a new report said on Wednesday.

“The very character of the Northeast is at stake,” Peter Frumhoff, director of science and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said in an interview about the report, called “Confronting Climate Change in the U.S. Northeast.” UCS collaborated with 50 scientists and economists to produce the peer-reviewed report about climate impacts to the Northeast.


It found that New York City could be hit once a decade with the type of extreme flooding that now occurs once every century as a result of rising seas and more frequent storms brought about by increased heat-trapping emissions from tailpipes, industry, and forest burning.

Boston and Atlantic City could be hit by such floods every two years, said the report, which used projections from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2007 assessments.

Reuters