Upsetting: New York would be collapsing under the weight of its skyscrapers

The iconic and magnificent city of New York It’s sinking. And its immense and numerous skyscrapers are responsible for this. Good time then to go and see her.

At least that’s what a new study ensures that shaped the geology beneath the city compared to satellite data showing its footprint collapsing to Earth.

As the scientists explained, this gradual settlement or sudden subsidence of the earth’s surface occurs when soft sediments move or the loads exerted on the ground push it even deeper.

There are many more probable causes, but the weight of the cities themselves is rarely studied.

New York is sinking at a rate of 1 to 2 millimeters per year, And as the study, published in Earth’s Future, found, the culprit is the weight of its massive buildings.

A few millimeters may not seem like a lot, but some parts of the city are sinking much fasteron par with the faster observed rates at which tectonic plates recover as glaciers melt.

This discovery it could spell serious trouble for the already low-lying city (just 10 meters above sea level) which is home to more than 8 million people.

The leaders of the study have assured that these data should encourage putting increased efforts to develop mitigation strategiesn to counter the growing risk of flooding and rising sea levels.

“The purpose of the article is raise awareness that each additional high-rise built in coastal, river or lake environments could contribute to future flood risk,” said study team leader Tom Parsons, a geologist with the United States Geological Survey and the University of Rhode Island.

Parsons and his colleagues calculated the cumulative mass of New York City’s more than 1 million buildings. This turned out to be 764,000,000,000 kilograms.

The next step was to divide the city into a grid of 100 by 100 square meters etc.They converted the mass of the buildings into downward pressurefor which they took into account the force of gravity.

New York is located in third place in the world regarding the risk of future floods. Much of Manhattan is only 1 to 2 meters above current sea level.

Certainly, New York is not alone in its downfall. A quarter of the capital of Indonesia, Jakarta, could be submerged by 2050, with parts of the city sinking nearly 11 inches a year due to groundwater abstraction.

“New York is emblematic of growing coastal cities around the world that are being watched sinking, which means this there is a shared global mitigation challenge against an increasing danger of flooding,” conclude the researchers.

A 2022 study of 99 coastal cities around the world found that subsidence actually it could be a bigger problemor at least underestimated, compared to sea level rise.

In most of the cities studied, the land is sinking faster than sea level rise, meaning residents will face the challenge of flooding. sooner than predicted by climate models.