Irvington Asks For—And Gets—Not-So-Good News On Climate Change

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Climate Change experts at Irvington's Public Library

May 5, 2024

By Jeff Wilson–

In the 16 months since Charlotte Binns was named Irvington’s first Sustainability Director, the village has upped its game in keeping environmental issues in the forefront of its public policies. On the first Wednesday of every month, the Irvington Green Policy Task Force hosts a program. The program for May, which drew an audience of 20-25 people to the Irvington Library, featured a trio of climate scientists in a panel discussion entitled “Climate Change in Irvington and the NYC Metro Region.”

The three panelists, all affiliated with Columbia University, have too many environment-based credentials to count. Cynthia Rosenzweig, who led the proceedings, is Co-Chair of the New York City Panel on Climate Change (NPCC), a body of experts who advise the city on how to adapt its critical infrastructure to protect it from weather catastrophes.

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Accompanying Rosenzweig was Malgosia Madajewicz, a Harvard-trained economist with expertise in adaptation to climate change. She’s also a flood specialist, advising individuals and communities in coastal areas prone to flooding. Madajewicz is a member of the Westchester County Climate Task Force and also works with NPCC.

Maria Dombrov is a climate change and cities researcher at NASAs Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), where she strives to understand the potential effects of climate change and extreme weather events on cities and their surrounding metropolitan regions across the globe.

Rosenzweig opened the discussion, stressing that people need to address mitigation, specifically reduction of greenhouse gases, the root cause of climate change, and responding to increasing extreme climate events. The accompanying slide show provided some sobering statistics. The year 2023 was the hottest on record, according to NASA GISS, with projected temperatures in the Hudson Valley rising every decade, reaching 5.7 to a full 10 degrees hotter by the 2070’s. Scientists also predict an increase in precipitation – rainfall – from one to eight percent in the 2030’s and four to eleven percent twenty years after that. “We’re mitigating so we can be more on the lower end of these projections,” she said, “but there’s still a potential for being on the higher end. That’s why we have to keep on mitigating.”

Another of Rosenzweig’s predictions concerned the impact climate change will have on sea levels and increase the frequency of severe hurricanes. Higher sea levels mean an increased risk of storm surge-related flooding. “And with the sea level higher,” she explained, “the coastal flooding will go further inland.” As for hurricanes, “the number is not projected to rise but the actual frequency of the most extreme – the Category 5 type – will increase,” she declared. In cities, the panelists’ main area of study, higher sea levels and more severe storms will result in increased damage to infrastructure such as energy and transportation facilities. Of particular concern to Rivertowns residents are projections for the Hudson River itself. According to New York State’s Climate Impacts Assessment (NYSCIA), the river can be expected to rise fully four feet by the 2080’s. Heat waves, air quality crises and rainstorms are all weather events we’re likely to experience in years to come.

When Malgosia Madajewicz took the floor, she recounted her experiences working with New Yorkers suffering flood damage to their homes. She has advised residents of the Rockaways in Queens with flood-prone basements to consider filling them in with concrete. Most homeowners there are opting to do nothing about floods, she reported – either by shoring up their basements or by moving away. Instead, they adopt an “Oh well” philosophy. Yet despite this inertia in the Rockaways, the city, she said, “has made huge gains since (Hurricane) Sandy” with flood adaptation systems.

The last speaker, Dobrov, who also studies climate’s impact on New York City, discussed her work as a member of the Urban Climate Change Research Network, an international consortium of expert scientists that is awaiting publication of its reports in the Third Assessment Report on Climate Change and Cities. “We really try to capture the latest science and encapsulate it into the publication but also into policy recommendations as well,” Dobrov explained.

Among other areas of concentration, the organization studies climate effects on a micro level. She displayed a map of New York City peppered with schools and hospitals where she and her team were painstakingly predicting the effects of coastal flooding on each facility. Dobrov is optimistic about municipal plans to adjust to climate change. “Millions and billions are being spent on projects to change the landscape of New York,” she said. (A perfect example is the unfinished installation of floodgates along the East River on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.)

Attending the panel was Irvington resident, former TIME writer and author of a dozen books, including the most recent, award-winning Fire and Flood: A People’s History of Climate Change, from 1979 to the Present. Impressed by the level of community engagement, Linden nonetheless tempered the assessment of risk locally. “Yes, we face the threat of sea level rise, floods and storm surges–remember Sandy?” he said. “But we also are lucky to be living in a part of the country that is less likely to face some of the most dangerous threats of climate change, such as extremes of temperature, lethal combinations of heat and humidity, and wind storms and tornadoes super-pumped by a warming world. Small comfort, but something.”

The seminar concluded with attendees breaking up into groups to discuss climate impact locally and possible collaborative efforts to approach it.

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