From the Asbury Park Press:
Sea-level rise threatens bay shores, wetlands
A rising sea level. Greater coastal flooding. Threats to wetlands.
New Jersey’s future will include these and other key issues, according to experts interviewed before and after a new international report on climate change was released on Friday.
“Basically . . . the future doesn’t look good” because the coast is being submerged by rising water and eroded because no new sediment is coming in, said Norbert P. Psuty, a coastal expert at Rutgers University’s Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences.
“We’re . . . in a very pre-carious situation” in many parts of the coast, said Psuty, director of Sandy Hook Cooperative Research Programs.
But people can adjust by elevating their homes, yards and streets and by replenishing beaches, including those on the bay side, said James G. Titus, project manager for sea-level rise at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency since 1982.
“People can adapt” to a rising sea level, said Titus, who has vacationed on vulnerable Long Beach Island since 1955. “People can plan for it.”
The new Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change summary report — “Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis” — prompted a mixture of pessimism, pragmatism and optimism last week.
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Some officials in New Jersey have been planning for sea level rise and the threat of storms riding on higher water levels.“It’s the frequency of storms that . . . we’re going to have to worry about in the future,” said Kenneth E. Pringle, Belmar mayor.
“With the sea level rising, it just becomes much more difficult to protect (the) community against the increased number of natural events that can cause property damage,” Pringle said.
Belmar officials have been working on protection efforts and emergency response plans, he said.
New Jersey’s relative sea level rose about 16 inches in the last century and is increasing at a rate that’s about twice the global average, Psuty said. About half of New Jersey’s increase is due to the land sinking.
“My analysis of the data suggests that there is actually an increasing rate of sea-level rise in the last few decades,” and that would result in a water level about 24 or 25 inches higher in the next century, he said.
Titus said the sea might rise three feet off New Jersey this century.