Green Jersey

Expert: Warming will be really, really bad for N.J.

A leading expert on glaciers recently said glacial melt is precipitating at its fastest rate ever and could add 3 feet to the world’s sea levels by 2100, really doing a number on New Jersey’s coast and coastal towns.

Lonnie G. Thompson, an Ohio State professor and glaciologist, predicts that by the end of the 21st century, global temperature will rise by 3 degrees Celsius, spurring a melt that will flood parts of North Jersey (including Edgewater, Hoboken, Jersey City, Liberty State Park, Bayonne, the Meadowlands, Newark, Newark Airport, Carteret and Roselle, says the Herald News). Coastal areas would be more apt to get pummeled by storms.

And, it turns out that even if we achieve emissions reductions like the ones laid out in the 2007 Global Warming Response Act, glaciers will keep 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” (from the Herald News story, which ran yesterday). Man.

More: Warming will raise sea levels, recede coast (Herald News)