NPCC4: Climate change and New York City's flood risk
This NPCC4 chapter reviews all flood hazards facing NYC—pluvial, fluvial, coastal, groundwater, and compound—and provides climate context for risk management. It profiles historical events and synthesizes research on exposure, vulnerability, and mitigation, including nature‑based and nonstructural measures.
Subject Tags
- Natural climate solutions
- Climate impacts
- Climate mitigation
Abstract
This chapter of the New York City Panel on Climate Change 4 (NPCC4) report provides a comprehensive description of the different types of flood hazards (pluvial, fluvial, coastal, groundwater, and compound) facing New York City and provides climatological context that can be utilized, along with climate change projections, to support flood risk management (FRM). Previous NPCC reports documented coastal flood hazards and presented trends in historical and future precipitation and sea level but did not comprehensively assess all the city's flood hazards. Previous NPCC reports also discussed the implications of floods on infrastructure and the city's residents but did not review the impacts of flooding on the city's natural and nature-based systems (NNBSs). This—the NPCC's first report focused on all drivers of flooding—describes and profiles historical examples of each type of flood and summarizes previous and ongoing research regarding exposure, vulnerability, and risk management, including with NNBS and nonstructural measures.
Citation
Rosenzweig, B., Montalto, F.A., Orton, P., Kaatz, J., Maher, N., Kleyman, J., Chen, Z., Sanderson, E., Adhikari, N., McPhearson, T. and Herreros‐Cantis, P., 2024. NPCC4: Climate change and New York City's flood risk (Vol. 1539, No. 1, pp. 127-184). https://doi.org/10.1111/nyas.15175
TNC Authors
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Nicole Maher
Senior Coastal Scientist, New York
The Nature Conservancy
Email: nmaher@tnc.org