Mar 16, 2009 8:06 pm US/Eastern
Could Back Bay Turn Back To A Bay Again?
BOSTON (WBZ) ―
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Douglas's study includes satellite images that show the Back Bay and financial district of downtown Boston under water after a storm surge in the year 2100.
WBZ
A new study predicts the biggest sea level rise in the world will happen here in the northeast because of man-made global warming.
Imagine M.I.T. under water as the Charles River floods Cambridge and Boston during a significant storm late this century. "The storm that we would expect to come once every 100 years could come every decade or even every few years," says Ellen Douglas, PhD, who can see her lab, the ocean, through her window at UMass Boston.
She has done a study that predicts a sea level rise of 2 to 3 feet by the end of the century because of global warming. A newer study published in the journal
Nature Geoscience adds 8 inches to that prediction because of changing ocean currents.
Douglas' study includes satellite images that show the Back Bay and financial district of downtown Boston under water after a storm surge in the year 2100. That would submerge surface streets, basements, subways, and electrical conduits in what Douglas terms a "catastrophic event."
A researcher for the U.S. Geological Survey says eventually New England could become as vulnerable to storms and sea level rise as New Orleans.
State Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary Ian Bowles says his office began working with coastal communities in January to manage effects of sea level rise, "and by the time our grandchildren or our great-grandchildren are around, we're going to have a very different Bay State, more bay and a little less state and we need to be prepared for that."
Massachusetts has 1,500 miles of shoreline along which there are 78 communities. Seventy-seven percent of the state's population lives in coastal counties. Twenty-seven percent of the gross state product is driven by the costal and ocean economy.
Bowles says the state Department of Environmental Protection is teaming up with the E.P.A. and UMass to sponsor a seminar this fall about effects of climate change on watersheds to help cities and towns develop appropriate regulations.
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