Start spreading the news, New York’s (gradually) sinking today. It’s well established that sea levels are already rising across the globe, and New York City’s brush with Hurricane Sandy brought a Florida-level flood to Gotham. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently projected that in 2050 moderate flooding is projected to occur more than 10 times as frequently as it does now. Cue 10 times as many videos of brown water rushing into the subways. But stunning research finds that the famous New York skyline is falling into the sea, one millimeter at a time.
Researchers Tom Parsons, Pei-Chin Wu, Meng “Matt” Wei and Steven D’Hondt set out to “calculate the mass of all buildings in New York City” while modeling the “subsidence caused by the pressure they exert on the Earth” and to show detailed images of the city literally sinking, scraped from satellite data. Their findings, published by the Earth’s Future journal, showed the city is already sinking 1mm to 2mm a year, and in some places more than that. The researchers add that the sea levels will likely rise by 200mm to 600mm by 2050, posing a greater threat to coastal cities and subsiding cities (cities that are already sinking), at a rate of four times higher than stable regions. Most cities around the world will sink as urban areas become denser, they projected.
