Editorial: The future is fast approaching
The North Fork, which on a map looks like a gnarled finger pointing out to sea, does not enjoy a topography that will easily deal with the rising ocean temperatures and sea levels brought by climate change.
In several places, the peninsula narrows to just the width of a road, with salt water on both sides. In just the past few months we have seen increasingly high tides — including one earlier this month — that surrounded multi-million-dollar waterfront homes and cut off several access roads.
There is nothing theoretical about what’s going on. Climate change is here, it’s underway and we are seeing its impact. By all predictions, it will get worse.
On April 4, during a wind-driven high tide, the bay in New Suffolk splashed over First Street and encroached on east-facing businesses. Southold Highway Superintendent Dan Goodwin drove to the scene in the middle of the night to see for himself.
“The water was very high,” he said recently. “It was well over where Captain Marty’s Fishing Station used to be and up onto First Street.”
Southold Town is in the process of mapping the streets most vulnerable to non-storm— and even non-moon-phase — flooding, such as low-lying Grathwohl Road in New Suffolk, which skirts the eastern edge of West Creek. Town officials need to prioritize this effort so waterfront homeowners know what they’re facing and residents are fully aware of what it will cost to raise roads and protect properties.
Some context: “The ocean has now broken temperature records every day for more than a year,” according to a recent New York Times story. “And so far, 2024 has continued 2023’s trend of beating previous records by wide margins. In fact, the whole planet has been hot for months, according to many different data sets.”
Last month, according to the story, “the average global sea surface temperature reached a new monthly high of 21.07 degrees Celsius, or 69.93 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service, a research institution funded by the European Union.”
With all this swirling in the background, Cutchogue resident John Gibbons’ April 9 presentation to the Southold Town Board was timely and important. His talk was filled with data points and real science. Although he spoke to Southold officials, everything he said applies equally to Riverhead and the other East End towns. We are all in the same boat.
Mr. Gibbons is a retired Mattituck High School teacher. His goal was to alert board members to the harsh reality of climate change and the threat it poses to the region’s unique geography. He quoted numbers procured from scientific and government sources, including the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
“About two feet of sea level rise along the U.S. coastline is increasingly likely between 2020 and 2100 because of emissions to date,” Mr. Gibbons said, quoting the NOAA 2022 Sea Level Rise Technical Report. “They’re not including future emissions.”
He went on to read from the report: “Failing to curb future emissions could cause an additional 1.5 to 5 feet of rise for a total of 3.5 to 7 feet by the end of this century.’”
One of the effects of climate change most detrimental to region’s future, Mr. Gibbons explained, is the melting of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets.
“We’re talking about Southold disappearing,” he said. “That’s not going to happen next year, that’s not going to happen in 2100, but if we care about Southold Town, we have to start thinking about that.”
As new administrations in Riverhead and Southold move forward, they must confront the reality of what is happening all around us. Perhaps a joint commission — even one that works with Southampton, East Hampton and Shelter Island — staffed by experts, would be a way for the public to better understand what we are truly facing.
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