Rising Temperatures, Rising Waters: New 'Climate Ready Boston' Report Released

BOSTON, MA — In his opening letter in the December 2016 "Climate Ready Boston" report, Mayor Marty Walsh writes, "We’ve seen more frequent flooding on Morrissey Boulevard. We endured the record-sett ing snowstorms of 2015. And this year we experienced the driest, and one of the hottest, summers in our history. Climate change has influenced all these events."

It's been about a year since the mayor's Climate Ready initiative kicked off, and this year's report provides both recommendations on how the city can adapt and prepare for coming change, as well as updated projections of what those changes could look like.

You can read the report in full here.

According to the city, its next planning phase will focus on the East Boston Greenway and Charlestown's Schrafft site, two areas most at-risk for flooding with available funding through the Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management.

"The projects will build on the vulnerability assessment developed through Climate Ready Boston findings, and will develop and design coastal resiliency strategies," according to a city press release.

Patch has pulled from the report its estimates on the impact climate change could have on temperatures and sea-levels in Boston which, as the report notes, become less and less precise the farther out they go. Far-flung future outcomes are largely dependent on how much carbon emissions are cut in the short-term, the report notes.

Temperature

• Heat waves will become more common, last longer, and be hotter.
• While the average summer temperature in Boston from 1981 to 2010 was 69 degrees, it may be as high as 76 degrees by 2050 and 84 degrees by 2100.
• By 2050, Boston’s summers may be as hot as Washington, DC’s, summers are today, and by the end of the century, they may be hotter than Birmingham, Alabama, are today.
• Although winters will be warmer, the risk of frost and freeze damage and cold snaps will continue.
• While from 1981 to 2010, Boston reached below freezing almost one out of three days per year, by the end of the century, this may happen only around one in ten days.

Sea-level Rise

• Over the entire twentieth century, sea levels rose about nine inches relative to land. Another eight inches of relative sea level rise may happen by 2030, almost three times faster.
• By 2050, sea levels may be as much as 1.5 feet higher than they were in 2000, and by 2070, they may be as much as 3 feet higher than in 2000.
• While sea level rise projections for 2030 are about the same across all emission scenarios, in later years there are big differences between scenarios. With a sharp reduction in global emissions, end-of-century sea level rise could stay under two feet, but a continuation of business as usual may result in over seven feet of sea level rise.

Image via Boston Transportation Department from Mayor Walsh's press conference on the Climate Ready report, held Thursday morning.