This is worrying news for the city of skyscrapers. A scientific study has just shown that New York is sinking under your feet faster than you think. This leaves him much more vulnerable. sea level rise is due to climate change.
The study, published in the journal Earth’s Future, aims to reveal how low the city has fallen. To do this, they first measured the weight of the entire city and calculated that. New York’s million buildings with a total mass of 762 million tons, They exert downward pressure on the ground on which they are placed.
To get an idea, CNN calculated that this weight is equivalent to about 1.9 million 747 jumbo jets filled with fuel.
The report concludes that the city is sinking at an average rate of one to two millimeters each year. But, some areas built on softer rock are sinking up to 4.5 millimeters per yearAccording to experts.
But lead author Tom Parsons explained that building fewer skyscrapers will not solve the problem either. “The main cause of New York and largely the East Coast sinking is plate tectonics.and this is unstoppable,” said Parsons, a geophysicist with the US Geological Survey.
The sea has risen 23 centimeters since 1950.
Sea Level Rise organization, Water levels around New York are almost 9 inches higher today than they were in 1950.
This is a slow but relentless progress. The City Council estimates that the surrounding waters will rise between 20 and 76 centimeters by 2050.It is a fact that will trigger the effect of the rise in sea level caused by the increase in temperature and the melting of the polar caps.
Currently the State New York spends billions of dollars building embankments, upgrading roads and improving drainage systems. To reduce the risks arising from this situation.
But for now, the low-lying areas are already bearing the brunt of the devastating flooding caused by the most intense storms.
Hurricane Sandy in 2012 killed 40 city residents and destroyed nearly 300 homes, as well as leaving thousands without electricity. In 2021, Hurricane Ida left more than a dozen people to die, unable to escape from flooded basements.
Parsons pointed out to the AFP agency that it is impossible to know exactly which particular pieces will sink at what moment, but that this is something that will undoubtedly happen. “Time is difficult to predict because while the city’s collapse is relatively stable, estimates of sea level rise are uncertain and dependent on future greenhouse gas emission rates.”
But New York isn’t the only city in the world to sink. To this end, Venice is facing increasing problems and Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta, is sinking at such an alarming rate that the government has decided to relocate it. to another part of the country.
Reference work: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2022EF003465
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