New York at risk from rising sea levels

Paris: The sea level on a stretch of the US Atlantic coast that features the cities of New York, Norfolk and Boston is rising up to four times faster than the global average, a report said on Sunday.

...If global temperatures continue to rise, the sea level on this portion of the coast by 2100 could rise up to 30 centimetres over and above the one-metre global surge projected by scientists, it added.

The localised acceleration is thought to be caused by a disruption of Atlantic current circulation.

“As fresh water from the melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet enters the ocean, it disrupts this circulation, causing the currents to slow down,” USGS research oceanographer and study co-author Kara Doran explained....
Another study has shown a one-metre sea level rise to increase New York’s severe flooding risk from one incident every century to one every three years...most climate change scientists now project the ocean will rise roughly a metre by century’s end..

...“Due to the long time it takes for the world’s ice and water masses to react to global warming, our emissions today determine sea levels for centuries to come,” said lead author Michiel Schaeffer of Wageningen University in the Netherlands.