Disease-carrying mosquitoes and ticks are an increased threat in New Jersey because they are living longer due to extended warm months and mild winters.

Some of the state's largest and most popular lakes have been inundated by algae blooms this summer due to an exceptionally wet year and exceptionally warm July.

And fish that once swam in abundance off the coast of New Jersey have migrated north in search of cooler waters.

Climate change is no longer an abstract concept or future threat, scientists say. Its effects are being felt all over New Jersey, from Shore towns facing increased coastal flooding to Meadowlands communities that were ravaged by Superstorm Sandy and inland communities dealing with increased flash flooding from more intense rainfall.

“What we’re seeing lately is unprecedented in the magnitude of the changes and the speed at which they are occurring,” said David Robinson, a Rutgers University professorand the state climatologist, who has been analyzing New Jersey's climate for decades. “It’s a global issue that has local ramifications, and in New Jersey that’s manifesting itself in rising temperatures and more abundant rainfall.”

The overwhelming majority of scientists, peer-reviewed studies, and government agencies have shown that the planet is warming due in large part to human activity, such as burning fossil fuels like coal, natural gas and gasoline, which has increased the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, preventing heat from escaping into space.

New Jersey is fast becoming ground zero for climate change. Sea level rise is happening so fast in the state that it's double the global average, thanks in part to melting glaciers and the expansion of warmer water along with a gradually sinking coastal landmass.

Temperatures in the Garden State are also rising faster than the national average, so much so that New Jersey's top 10 warmest years since 1895 have all come after 1990, including 2012, the hottest year New Jersey has experienced since records started being kept in 1895. A list of New Jersey's warmest years is below.

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New Jersey has experienced an increase in temperature of at least 3 degrees Fahrenheit over the past century, according to scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. A recent analysis by the Washington Post puts it even higher, at 3.6 degrees since 1895 — double the average for the continental U.S.

The last time New Jersey saw one of the five coldest months on record was December 1989. “Since that time, we’ve had approximately 50 of the top five warmest months on record,” Robinson said. “The balance has just totally shifted to the warm side.”

Temperature is not the only manifestation of climate change. New Jersey was deluged with more precipitation in 2018 than any other year since records have been kept — even though there was no single big storm last year like Hurricane Irene in 2011, the year which previously held the record.

The story continues after this photo gallery:

The rising temperatures and precipitation have helped drive a growing list of tangible impacts thatclimate change has already caused in New Jersey:

Insects threat

Warmer temperatures and more rain lead to more mosquitoes and extends their activity earlier into spring and later into autumn.

New Jersey saw a record number of West Nile cases in 2018 with 61, including three deaths caused by the mosquito-borne disease. This year New Jersey had the earliest reported West Nile case ever when a Hunterdon County man was diagnosed on June 21.

Warmer winters allow ticks to survive the season and transmit diseases in a period when they were usually dormant.

Algae blooms

Climate change has helped propel more toxic algae blooms in New Jersey’s lakes, state environmental officials say, including two of its largest — Lake Hopatcong in Morris County and Greenwood Lake in Passaic County .

A combination of short, torrential rainstorms followed by very warm days — July 2019 was one of the warmest and wettest on record — helped spur algae growth in places like Deal and Sunset lakes in Monmouth County and Swartswood Lake and Lake Mohawk in Sussex County.

Although some of the algae has subsided, most of Lake Hopatcong has been under a no-swim advisory for two months, and Greenwood Lake has been under an advisory since mid-July.

A disappearing Meadowlands

The Meadowlands has more water than ever.

Open water increased by 147% between 1889 and 1995, removing hundreds of acres of vegetation that had long absorbed the brunt of storms and tidal flooding, according to scientists with the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority.

And the remaining marshes are threatened by sea level rise, so much so that the authority is looking to create new wetlands to act as natural buffers in places like the Saw Mill Creek area in Lyndhurst. This section of the Meadowlands, located between the two spurs of the New Jersey Turnpike, often resembles a lake rather than a traditional tidal wetland.

"Sea level rise is a significant threat here because there is nothing to stop it," said Terry Doss, director of natural resources management for the authority. "So if you get another storm like Sandy, you're going to have nothing to act as a buffer between the water and something like the Turnpike."

Fish leaving

Ocean temperatures along the East Coast rose 3.5 degrees in the last 30 years, according to Malin Pinsky, a marine biologist and associate professor of ecology at Rutgers University.

That has caused fish and shellfish populations to move farther north to cooler waters. For instance, American shad, centered off Sandy Hook in 1971, has shifted up to Rockport, Massachusetts. The American lobster, centered off Long Branch in 1970, is now centered off Salem, Massachusetts.

The changes are not surprising to experienced anglers.

“We were the canaries in the mines," said Tom Fote, an officer with the Jersey Coast Anglers Association.

Extreme weather

New Jersey is more susceptible to extreme weather. While Superstorm Sandy wasn’t propelled by climate change alone, the phenomenon did play a role in its intensity. The storm caused $29.4 billion in damage throughout the state.

Rising sea levels led to about 40,000 New Jerseyans being affected by Sandy’s floodwaters that would not have otherwise been affected, according to Rutgers researchers.

“The impacts of Sandy were exacerbated by our rising sea level and by the fact that we’re getting warmer,” Robinson said. “That warmth also includes sea surface temperatures, which helped fuel the strength of Sandy further up the East Coast than you would see in late October.”

Getting worse?

The projections for New Jersey are not good — unless the global release of greenhouse gases is curbed significantly, along with efforts to remove carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere.

New Jersey will likely always be vulnerable to sea level rise, with its 126 miles of Atlantic coastline and the heavily developed riverfronts along North Jersey's tidal waterways. For starters, as the massive ice sheet retreated at the end of the most recent Ice Age, it caused inland areas to rebound or lift, released of the ice sheet's weight, while causing the New Jersey shoreline to start sinking, a process called glacial isostatic adjustment.

But a team of Rutgers scientists have projected the dire circumstances New Jersey would face by the end of the century if no action is taken to reduce carbon emissions and counter climate change.

The Jersey Shore would see a 3½-foot sea level rise by 2100, while places like Camden, Trenton and Bayonne, where the Hackensack and Passaic rivers meet, would see a rise of 3 feet.

A 2017 report by the Union of Concerned Scientists predicted that communities in the Meadowlands would be especially hard hit by even moderate sea level rise within the next 16 years. And by 2060, the impacts would be far greater.

In North Jersey, the affected communities would include East Rutherford, Hackensack, Leonia, Lyndhurst, North Bergen, Ridgefield, Ridgefield Park, Secaucus and South Hackensack.

Top 10 warmest years in New Jersey (1895-2018)

2012: 55.9 degrees

1998: 55.2

2016: 55

2006: 55

2011: 54.9

2010: 54.7

2017: 54.6

1990: 54.5

1991: 54.4

2002: 54.3

Source: Office of the State Climatologist