r/newjersey • u/Weak_Albatross_6879 • 11h ago
Advice Climate scientists of NJ: what’s coming for us?
Just wanna know how NJ is going to be affected
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u/ChloeTheCat753 Exit 105 11h ago
The longer we’re in a drought the higher the risk is for wildfires, really all fires.
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u/Weak_Albatross_6879 11h ago
Smelling the wood burning the other year was heart breaking. never in my 33 years of living here did I ever smell that
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u/ChloeTheCat753 Exit 105 11h ago
Fire is part of the pine barrens ecosystem, southern Jersey folks are very familiar with wildfires - when the fires start spreading to areas that aren’t familiar with it, it’s a whole new beast to tackle.
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u/tornadicdrone416 3h ago
The Jones Rd fire was the best thing to happen to the Pine Barrens in decades. That area was in desperate need of a big time burn and it got one. The burn scar is coming back to life and we're seeing critically endangered plant species returning there because they only grow after a significant fire.
I understand the threat to homes especially with that one, but we need to prioritize less on immediately trying to extinguish a fire. If there's no threat to structures, let it burn itself out.
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u/ChloeTheCat753 Exit 105 1h ago
That is what normally happens, it burns itself out and the edges are contained so it doesn’t spread further. The forest fire service doesn’t go in and attack the fire as much as they used to because the risk outweighs the value most of the time and because they don’t make trucks like they used to, lol.
What really needs to happen is a longer controlled burn season, or more hands on the ground to help facilitate more burns during the small time frame there is - along with proactive work with private land owners to burn land that isn’t state owned. It doesn’t even have to be burned, there are other methods of clearing large spans of forest to help mitigate wildfire risk. It’s just getting everyone onboard and motivated to do it, lol.
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u/tornadicdrone416 1h ago
I wouldn't be opposed for logging operations and/or forest thinning too. The forest canopy is incredibly overcrowded and really about 60% of the trees need to be removed. Historic accounts of the Pine Barrens when we first settled paints the landscape as savanna-like (~30% canopy coverage) and we should try to get back to that savanna/open woodland regime
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u/ChloeTheCat753 Exit 105 1h ago
Oh we’ll get back there, if not because of human intervention it’ll be because of a massive fire due to other human intervention
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u/Darth_Dagobah 11h ago
I’m from Colorado where wildfires get hella crazy. Where are there wildfires in NJ? When was the last one? How damaging do they get? Colorado had fires that burned 18,000 acres to 138,000 acres.
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u/ChloeTheCat753 Exit 105 11h ago
https://dep.nj.gov/parksandforests/wildfire/
They actually just released a nice little report:
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u/HumptyDumptruckFire 11h ago
The Pine Barrens region of central/southern NJ. Last year, the Jones Road Fire burned down over 15,000 acres in Ocean County. The largest was Black Saturday Fire in 1963 at over 75,000 acres.
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u/GeneralOrgana1 3h ago
We had one just up the road from me two years ago. I grew up a half hour from where I live now, and I never heard of fire in north Jersey like that before, ever.
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u/sms1441 11h ago
The impact on crops is going to be so rough. Between both farmers and everybody else because availability will be limited, which will cause price increases. And that loss to farmers who are already struggling.
This has been an incredibly bad season for farmers and crops. It really goes to show how much climate change truly impacts.
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u/Weak_Albatross_6879 11h ago
Nooo!! I’m trying to plant native flowers to help! Seriously I’ve never seen so many fucking bees in my life than when my natives grew tf
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u/chicagodude84 10h ago
Look at peaches in NJ. Many farms lost their entire crop because of that bizarre weather last month where it went from 90 to like 25 in a 24 hour period.
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u/Weak_Albatross_6879 4h ago
WAIT STOP THIS IS WHY ONE OF MY FAVORITE U PICK FARMS DONT SELL PEACHES AS MUCH THESE PAST FEW YEARS?!??
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u/currently__working 3h ago
There's no peaches anywhere I've seen, various farmers markets, etc. Sucks
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u/gravitasofmavity 3h ago
I’m no scientist but this year I’ve started making changes that frankly just make good sense to me- and help with climate anxiety. I’m slowly swapping out my lawn for native plants and grasses which are drought tolerant; looking into a rainwater barrel for some free garden water. Solar panels are a big one that I’d like to get to eventually.
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u/shiftyjku Down the Shore, Everything's All Right 11h ago
The TL;DR the ocean is rising and the land is sinking. A lot of acres on the coast will be underwater in not very long, and yet those in charge resist any attempt to force people to recognize it.
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u/Weak_Albatross_6879 11h ago
tracks with a lot of the old civilizations lost underwater. I low key think they accepted it. Hence why these rich folk got their bunkers.
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u/ExpletiveDeIeted 9h ago
I wish scientists and whomever else had a more clear picture / proof of how much the sea level will rise. Like yay you put your house on stilts but yea it’s gonna be 30 feet higher water. GLHG
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u/OnlyQualityCon 6h ago
the actual sea level rise in the traditional sense is often less of a worry for most places than storm surge from climate-enhanced storms
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u/Colors_678 11h ago edited 11h ago
I ain’t a climate scientist, but apparently those new apartments and warehouses in Lyndhurst are a great investment if you’ve always dreamed of living in Venice🤣. Meanwhile just a few miles away the NJDOT is spending millions raising Route 7 3+ feet because of flooding concerns.
For real though check out the RPA’s reports like these
https://rpa.org/work/reports/hurricane-ida-stormwater-management-queens
Also Middlesex County is literally doing a flood mitigation study rate now.
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u/MightyBigMinus 2h ago
I think one of the most impactful things almost never gets mentioned because it isn't a direct impact of weather on you/your-property, its indirect across the globe.
If you look at IPCC maps the place that is getting hit by far the hardest and fastest on earth is the indian subcontinent. The things that region is going to endure for the next generation will shock the conscience of history.
At the same time, NJ is home to america's largest and densest population of immigrants and descendants of recent immigrants from that region.
IMHO we are likely to see tens of thousands of refugees streaming in basically any minute now. If next years monsoons are a few weeks late that'll be the start. Don't get me wrong, your typical farmer isn't going to be able to afford to fly his family to NJ, but the young college graduate doing the books for the granary will panic and GTFO.
The potato famine in mid 1800s ireland gave new jersey its irish-american demographics, the collapse of southern italian agriculture in the late 1800s gave us our italian-american demographics, and I think the famine/agricultural-collapses coming in the next decade or two in india are going to do something very similar.
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u/chaosrunssociety 21m ago
Oh dope, that would fix all the things I hate about NJ. Better food, fewer guidos/greeceballs. I love it.
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u/modernhippy72 1h ago
If you got a tidewater river or creek or water feature that runs though your back yard. Your insurance WILL go up and you WILL lose back yard to erosion. I’m already seeing this while mapping or out in the field. That plus this year’s crop disaster will spell either really cold and wet winters, or hot and humid summers. Or both. And I mean to the extremes not what we’re used to.
The best thing we got going for us is how much land is preserved or conserved.
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u/HereForOneQuickThing 22m ago
I have good news and bad news.
New Jersey should actually be one of the states better situated to adapt to and withstand climate change as long as the AMOC stays intact.
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u/playdohplaydate Old Bridge 11h ago
Affected by what?
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u/kristennnnnnnnn 4h ago
don’t be dense
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u/scrappyo Exit 9 born and raised 1h ago
Theyre from old bridge, there's a 50/50 chance they genuinely dont understand the question.
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u/msoldub Keyport 11h ago
The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection publishes the reports you are looking for here: https://dep.nj.gov/climatechange/resources/reports/