Rutgers scientists predict more heat, floods and drought in NJ
By: Amanda Oglesby
Asbury Park Press
USA Today Network - New Jersey
NEW BRUNSWICK - New Jersey residents should brace for a future with drier summers, heavier rain storms and more heat, said a new report from Rutgers University's Climate Change Resource Center.
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In New Jersey, 2024 marked the second-hottest year since record-keeping began 130 years ago, said New Jersey State Climatologist David Robinson, who is one of the Rutgers report's 11 authors. The only year that eclipsed last year [2024] was 2012, he said.
..... The record-setting heat in 2024 was another example of an overall warming trend in New Jersey;s climate over the past century -a trend that is expected to continue rising temperature over the next 75 years, a group of the report's authors said Thursday August 21, [2025] during virtual meeting with members of the public.
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"We have gotten considerably warmer in New Jersey recent decades," Robinson said. "We were really cooking back in 2024."
..... Global temperatures have risen about 2 degrees over the past century, but New Jersey is heating up twice as fast,said James Shope, a Rutgers University expert in climate change adaption and an author of the report. The Garden State has recorded about 4 degrees of warming since 1900, he said. Not all parts of the plant are heating up at the same rate. Some places - like the Arctic Circle, the Middle East, the southwestern United Stats and New Jersey - are seeing higher rising temperatures than the global average, he said.
..... "We think this warning trend is going to continue into the future," Shope said.
..... Scientists expect the temperature to rise another 3.7 to 6.2 degrees (over average from 1991 to 2020) by 2100, he said. That hotter climate means the more moisture, such could lead to heavier, extreme rain events, Robinson said.
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"A warming atmosphere can retain more moisture. For every 1.8 degree Fahrenheit change in temperature, the atmosphere has the potential of holding 7% more moisture," Robinson said.
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Those conditions mean hose-storms are capable of dropping massive amounts of rain in a single day, Rutgers climate scientists said.
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In addition, those deluges are punctuated by greater stretches of drought, the report said
..... Models of climate trends and evaporation lead scientists to predict that New Jersey will have wetter winters and drier summers, said Shope, the climate change adaptation specialist.
..... More hot weather and increasing rainfall are likely to stress storm-water management systems in urban areas and lead to more mosquitoes in New Jersey, Shope said. That could also raise the risk of outbreaks of mosquito-borne diseases, like West Nile virus and malaria, he said. Flooding, too, so likely to be an increasing problem for New Jersey residents, Shope said. Since 1911, sea level along New Jersey's coast has risen 19 inches, due to global seas and the sinking of the Earth's plate on which New Jersey sits, he said.
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Sea levels is predicted to rise another 2 to 5 feet over 2000's level by the end of the century, Shope said.
..... That sea level rise :exacerbates our worst events," he said. "for certain events like, say, a nor'easter that produces tome surge ... that storm surge act on top of an existing high tide line.
..... "With sea level rise, you ship that baseline higher and all of a sudden your storm surge can go in a lot farther and cause more damage," Shope said.
.....Inland communities in New Jersey are also at an increasing rs of flooding, said Anthony Broccoli, a Rutgers professor of atmospheric science and one of the report's authors.
..... "Inland areas can be subject to extreme rainfall, flooding, damage and even loss of life from tropical systems," Broccoli said. "As the world and its oceans warm, since those ocean waters are the source of energy for tropical systems, but also the source of moisture ... those systems will bring greater rainfall that can cause river flooding well away from the coastline."