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  • When you look at the world's population density map, you might notice a trend.

  • 40% of the world's population lives within 100 kilometers of a coast.

  • Most of those people

  • are living in and around large cities and these dense urban areas are

  • growing.

  • That growth calls for more manufacturing, transportation, power plants,

  • and electrical grids.

  • Resources like this are often placed in cheaper,

  • low elevation land. Which means that for many coastal communities, sea level rise

  • caused by climate change isn't just a problem for the future.

  • It's a problem

  • right now.

  • One of these places is the New Jersey Meadowlands.

  • It's a 30 mile

  • stretch of small towns built on marshlands.

  • As the land here sinks and sea

  • levels rise, some communities will begin to flood.

  • Once impacts become noticeable

  • such as water on low-lying streets, water coming in below seawalls.

  • Once that becomes noticeable and problematic it's going to become chronic

  • rather quickly.

  • So how do we know that sea level is rising?

  • Oxon isotopes.

  • The Gulf Stream.

  • Bathemetry.

  • We have several sources of evidence.

  • Scientists like these guys use a variety of records to study sea-level change.

  • The longest record where people have been observing sea-level rise directly is

  • with instruments called "tide gauges."

  • These instruments measure the level of water

  • as it goes up and down with the tide.

  • Using these gauges alongside geological

  • records and satellites, scientists have recorded an acceleration in sea level

  • which they expect to continue through this century.

  • Between 2000 and 2050 we're

  • probably looking at a range here in New Jersey of about 1 to 2 feet of sea level rise.

  • It's going to impact low-lying infrastructure in particular.

  • Imagine if

  • you're on a train and you had to wait for high tide to go out before the train

  • could go through

  • and what a disruption to the system that would be.

  • And then multiply that by every other train line or roadway

  • that goes at sea level.

  • The Meadowlands is six miles away from

  • New York City's Times Square.

  • It's one of the busiest transit corridors in the United States.

  • If you draw a line from Philadelphia to New York City and/or

  • Philadelphia to Boston, you basically have to go through the Meadowlands.

  • So as a result, all of the infrastructure that connects this region together

  • bottlenecks down, comes together in the Meadowlands.

  • By year 2050 researchers

  • estimate that 115 rail stations here would flood on a chronic basis.

  • And by that time

  • nearly 60% of the region's current power generating capacity would

  • be in a floodplain.

  • If you think back to Superstorm Sandy and one of the

  • iconic images of that storm was all of lower Manhattan in darkness.

  • It's not

  • just an inconvenience in a home losing power, we could shut down the entire

  • Northeast if we lost power.

  • Hurricane Sandy was and is a historic storm.

  • Scientists recorded tides up to 20 feet higher than usual along the New Jersey

  • and New York coastlines.

  • It was the second costliest storm on

  • record in the United States and the tunnels that carry hundreds of thousands

  • of commuters every day still need repair.

  • But with a rising sea level flooding

  • will get worse during weather events that aren't nearly as extreme as

  • Hurricane Sandy.

  • The simple thing to understand is that with a higher sea

  • level it requires less of a storm to produce the same amount of flooding and

  • the same storm will produce more flooding.

  • And in other parts of New Jersey

  • there have been documented nuisance flooding events.

  • Those can happen even when it doesn't rain. Oftentimes the water will come from the

  • ocean or river spilling its banks.

  • Not so much rainfall flooding. On America's

  • eastern coast tides cycle four times a day from high to low to high to low, but

  • at certain points of the year they can rise much higher than usual.

  • We're at a

  • point now with continued sea level rise, that the high tides of the year often

  • times called king tides with maybe a little extra wind behind them, they

  • become a problem and actually start to flood communities.

  • According to NOAA, the annual

  • number of high tide flood days is projected to increase fastest in

  • New York City. And in a few decades, coastal cities on the Atlantic could experience

  • high tide flooding as often as three times a week.

  • Storm flooding like what

  • Hurricane Sandy brought, could become more persistent very soon.

  • By the end of

  • the century, many towns in New Jersey would find themselves underwater

  • frequently. Including this town in the heart of the Meadowlands.

  • One report

  • suggested it would lose all of its housing to chronic flooding.

  • The response

  • to sea level rise boils down to three options: prevention

  • is basically building higher sea walls.

  • Things like berms.

  • Adaptation is elevation.

  • Some critical infrastructure can't relocate for economic reasons, so

  • it would just end up being cheaper to raise them.

  • Retreat is basically

  • returning the land to nature, but the state of New Jersey doesn't seem keen on that.

  • In the last decade, a new NFL stadium was built alongside large swaths

  • of new housing and there's an airport expansion plan.

  • But all of that new

  • concrete could increase flooding from storm water runoff.

  • The Meadowlands is

  • one of the biggest sponges in our region. If we get rid of those wetlands or if we

  • you know pave them over, we're going to be pushing water into other places.

  • It's very hard to find any community that's looking at sea-level rise as a

  • threat that they're planning for today.

  • Even if this is something that's 20

  • years away or so, the decisions we make today last into those 20 years and beyond

  • and we need to be doing more to prepare for those.

  • Sea level rise impacts are

  • happening now.

  • We're seeing them in the East Coast in terms of increased number

  • of these sunny day flooding events.

  • As sea levels continue to rise impacts

  • and become deeper, more severe, more widespread and we're going to have to

  • come to grips with the fact that the way that we live our lives today is not

  • going to be the way that we live our lives in the future.

  • Yo! Thank you for watching.

  • If you liked that video you're going to love what the Verge Science

  • team is making on their Youtube Channel.

  • You can check out one of their

  • new videos right here.

  • Again, thanks for watching and I'll see you soon.

When you look at the world's population density map, you might notice a trend.

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新澤西州為何會出現慢性洪水? (Why chronic floods are coming to New Jersey)

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    robert 發佈於 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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