JENNA LANG

On January 4, 2018 at 12:42 pm, high tide peaked in Boston Harbor [1]. The tide was projected to be 12.1 feet, high for January but nothing unusual [2]. Instead, a snowstorm offshore brought the tide up to 15.7 feet, breaking the previous record for the highest tide ever recorded in Boston [3]. 

 

Water poured into the city, stranding people in their cars and office buildings until they could be rescued by firefighters in boats. Residents had prepared for snow, not for chunks of ice floating down streets turned into rivers. Their snowshovels were useless, unable to remove the water or the sheets of ice that followed. This flood occurred during the coldest week of January on record, and temperatures plunged into the negatives just days after the flood, coating parts of the city in ice [4]. 

 

One month later and 1,700 miles away, a mother harp seal gives birth to a pure white pup just past the Arctic Circle [5]. She has chosen her birthing location wisely, searching for days for a piece of sea ice thick enough to last through April. For the first 12 days, she nurses her pup. Then, she is off to mate again, and her pup is on his own for 6 weeks until he is old enough and hungry enough to slide off the ice pack in search of catching his first meal.

 

At least, that is how the story used to go. Over the past 30 years, sea ice cover has decreased by 30% in harp seal territory [6]. Declining sea ice coverage has led to a host of problems for harp seals. Mother seals are struggling to find ice packs that will last long enough to hold the weight of their pups until they are ready to enter the water. Small ice packs melt too early, dumping pups into the water prematurely to drown or be hunted. Even the pups that do make it into the water are in danger. Some are crushed by ice floes that are falling apart at increasing rates. Others starve after the loss of fish and small crustaceans that can no longer survive on the edges of the volatile ice [7]. 

 

What is the connection between baby harp seals’ increasing struggle to survive and chunks of ice floating down State Street? Sea level rise.

 

Between 1950 and 2016, the water off the coast of Massachusetts rose by 8 inches [8]. In an everyday setting, this may not seem like much. However, most of Boston lies low, just above the high tide line [9]. When there is heavy rain or a storm surge, a few extra inches of water can have an enormous impact.

 

The record-breaking flooding that occurred on January 4, 2018 was from a high tide only 3 inches higher than normal. The storm was “a very typical storm, a run-of-the-mill storm,” according to local meteorologist David Epstein. It was completely average in strength and resulted in relatively minimal water level rise, yet the city broke a flooding record set in 1978 during Boston’s most infamous storm, the “Blizzard of ’78.”

 

Due to rising sea levels, large floods are now possible following non-extreme storms. This increases the number of days that have a potential of severe flooding. As Epstein explains, “That flooding that we saw in 2018, that was an anomaly, right? We hadn’t seen anything like that since the Blizzard of ’78. There’s a pretty big gap between 1978 and 2018. But that gap may shrink. So instead of it being 2018 to 40 years later, it might be 30 years. And then it might be 27, and then it might be 20, and then it might be 10, and then it might be 5.” While we cannot predict when the next large flood will be, it likely will not be 40 years away.

 

Unfortunately, the trouble is not only the frequency of flooding. As the climate changes, extreme storms are becoming more common and more intense [10]. Imagine what the 2018 flooding would have looked like had the storm been stronger than usual, centered over the coast, brought its own heavy precipitation, or lasted through multiple tide cycles. Storms that fit all of these categories have hit Boston, but fortunately, none have struck the city during a peak high tide. It is only a matter of time and statistics before our luck runs out. 

 

Boston’s weather is impacted by forces far away, including in the Arctic. As a region, the Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the world, a phenomenon known as “arctic amplification.” As the region warms, Arctic weather patterns are changing rapidly, transforming weather around the world. Since the industrial revolution, when humans began emitting large amounts of carbon dioxide into the air, global temperatures have increased by 1°C, but Arctic temperatures have increased by almost 3°C [11]. 

 

“Because the Arctic is warming more rapidly than the mid-latitudes, the temperature difference between the Arctic and the mid-latitudes is shrinking,” explains Dr. John Holdren, Senior Science Advisor to President Barack Obama. “This difference plays a major role in winds and ocean currents over the whole Northern Hemisphere. Among other impacts, changes in this temperature difference are responsible for increases in winter weather extremes in the Northern mid-latitudes, including Boston.”

 

Evidence from the past couple of years suggests that the Arctic’s amplified warming may be due to a positive feedback loop in atmospheric weather patterns [12, 13]. During winter in the Northern Hemisphere, the polar vortex, a swirling mass of low pressure and cold air over the Arctic, is usually at its strongest [14]. But as Arctic temperatures started to warm during the early years of climate change, the polar vortex began to slow and has continued to slow over time [15]. Dr. Holdren explains that as the polar vortex slows, the jet stream, which marks the boundary of the polar vortex, also slows, resulting in even more Arctic warming: “The power of the jet stream comes from the temperature difference between the mid-latitudes and the Arctic. As that temperature difference shrinks, the polar jet stream weakens, slowing down and becoming wavier. The downward lobes of the wavy polar vortex bring cold winter Arctic air down into the northern mid-latitudes; the upward lobes bring relatively warm mid-latitude air northward into the Arctic.” As the jet stream slows, the warm air newly brought into the Arctic stays there, and the cold air brought out of the Arctic stays over the northeastern United States [16]. This slows the jet stream even further. It also causes periods of extreme cold in Boston, such as the cold spell that followed the January 2018 flood.

 

While projections of future sea level rise are difficult to predict, it is certain that Boston’s sea level will rise during my lifetime [17]. The Boston my future kids grow up in will look different from the one I knew.

 

The next few years may give us a glimpse of what is to come. According to medium predictions, there is a 50/50 chance that Boston will have a 5-foot flood in the next 10 years and a 99% chance it will occur by 2050 [18]. A flood of this scale will put significant parts of the North End, Charlestown, East Boston, Beacon Hill, South Boston, Dorchester, and Mattapan underwater [19]. Some of this will be minimal flooding with a few inches of water, but many of these neighborhoods will have sections up to 4 feet under water [20]. My work at a media company in the North End sits on a wharf currently at 3 feet above sea level. The building has been there since the 1800s, but it cannot be there much longer. After a flood, the waters will recede, but flooding this high will damage buildings, cars, and underground public transportation, leaving the most vulnerable residents stranded in their homes.

 

The costs of Boston’s future flooding will be crippling. The city is currently ranked 8th in the world for flood risk and 8th for expected economic losses due to coastal flooding [21, 22]. To put that in perspective, the city currently spends 10% of its capital budget on raising roads, building concrete barriers, and other climate change preparedness projects [23]. This is significant work, and Boston received the American Cities Climate Challenge award in 2018 for its climate resilience plan [24]. However, the future costs will vastly outweigh our current spending of $30 million per year [25]. By 2050, the city is expected to lose over $700 million each year due to the economic impacts of flooding alone [26]. 

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Boston is not going down without a fight. The city’s Climate Ready Boston initiative focuses on preparing the city for the short- and long-term impacts of climate change [27]. The project also engages community leaders in order to better understand the specific problems that will impact each neighborhood, whether that be flooding, extreme heat, or other dangers.

 

Ruth Raphael, Landscape Architect with the National Park Service, frequently considers the effects of flooding. She lives in the Charlestown Navy Yard. Much of the Navy Yard is built on low-lying, filled land, so it will be some of the first land to flood. During the January 2018 flood, a building from World War II located there was significantly damaged. Raphael had to decide whether repair was worth it. “We are planning on demolishing [it] as part of our planning and just leaving a ‘ghosted’ structure,” she said. “It is not worth investing money to repair the building when we know it has already suffered the effects of flooding and will only be more susceptible in the future.” While this building was not of particular historical value, many in the city are. Raphael and other historians will increasingly face the difficult question of whether a building is worth repairing, relocating, or demolishing.

 

Our historic buildings and landmarks were not built with rising sea levels and extreme weather in mind. Neither were most homes, schools, and businesses. But some of Boston’s newer buildings are built for our watery future. Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, only a few minutes’ walk from the Navy Yard, has a higher base to protect against low levels of flooding, explained Raphael. To help keep the hospital functioning during more severe floods, the building also houses all of its utility equipment on the roof instead of in the basement, and it has no patient services on the first floor. These adaptations seek to keep healthcare workers and patients safe.

 

Despite innovations such as those at Spaulding, Dr. Holdren is not hopeful. As a science advisor to politicians, he has tried for decades to convince people to take climate change into consideration for policy, instead of relying on scientists to engineer a solution to the problem. He says that from what he has seen, “Most of the public and most policy makers are still underestimating the magnitude and urgency of the climate change challenge, in part because they overestimate how rapidly the deployment of advanced technologies for emissions reduction and climate change adaptation can be brought to bear.”

 

With all due respect, I hope he is wrong. But without regional, federal, and global requirements to reduce carbon emissions and a system of mutual accountability, my city, and hundreds of other cities around the world, will slowly slip into the harbor.  

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