CClimate change poses a range of hazards to New York City and its infrastructure. These changes suggest a need for the City to rethink the way it operates and adapts to its evolving environment. To respond to these changes and accomplish the goals outlined in PlaNYC, the City's comprehensive sustainability plan, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, convened the New York City Panel on Climate Change (NPCC) in August 2008. The NPCC, which consists of leading climate change and impact scientists, academics, and private sector practitioners, was charged with advising the Mayor and the New York City Climate Change Adaptation Task Force (the "Task Force") on issues related to climate change and adaptation as it relates to infrastructure. This document, one of three in a series of workbooks to be produced for the Task Force, provides climate change projections for New York City and identifies some of the potential risks to the City's critical infrastructure posed by climate change.

New York City will face higher temperatures and more rapidly rising sea levels, as well as more frequent and intense extreme weather events - like heat waves, heavy rainstorms, and coastal flooding - over the course of the century.