Environment
Central Park Is Opening a Lab to Study Climate Change
New York’s most famous park is leveraging its brand and its data to fight against the deterioration of urban forested areas.
A New York City Parks officer on horseback explores the Greyshot Arch, which flooded in Central Park after rain from Hurricane Ida on Sept. 2, 2021.
Photographer: Alexi J. Rosenfeld/Getty Images
For Norman Selby, last September’s Hurricane Ida was a call to action.
Selby, a member of the Central Park Conservancy Board of Trustees and a former senior partner at McKinsey & Co., knew that something had to be done to mitigate future damage caused by extreme weather events after Ida dumped a record 3.15 inches of rain on the park over the course of an hour, flooding the famous Boathouse and damaging roughly 50 trees.