New York City on the eastern coast of the United States is sinking 1 to 2 mm below sea level each year, a study has found. High-rise buildings weighing the equivalent of 70,000 Eiffel Towers and 140 million elephants press the ground, and sea level rise due to climate change has been blamed as the cause.
According to the paper “New York City’s Weight: Subsidence Potential Due to Anthropocene,” a research paper by USGS geologist Tom Parsons and his research team published in the May issue of the environmental journal “Earth Future,” New York City, where more than 8 million people live, is sinking every year, and 100 He pointed out high-rise buildings reaching 10,000 buildings as one cause.
Among the five special districts of New York City, except for the Bronx, Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, and Stanton Island are all islands facing the Atlantic Ocean. The research team found that Lower Manhattan, the Wall Street financial district where skyscrapers are concentrated, was sinking twice as fast. Queens and Brooklyn are also sinking, he added.
The total weight of one million high-rise buildings estimated by the research team is about 770 million tons, equivalent to the weight of 70,000 Eiffel Towers and 140 million elephants. New York’s major high-rise buildings, including the Empire State Building, are built on solid rock, but some buildings are built on a mixture of sand and clay, which speeds up the sinking rate, the research team argued.
Sea level rise due to climate change is also having an adverse effect. The research team warned that since 1950, sea level around New York City has risen by about 22 cm, which, combined with hurricanes, could cause future large-scale flooding to be more than four times more frequent than today. “We are witnessing subsidence not only in New York, but in coastal cities in the United States and around the world,” he said, adding that the world as a whole must prepare for the risk of flooding.
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Source: Donga
Mark Jones is a world traveler and journalist for News Rebeat. With a curious mind and a love of adventure, Mark brings a unique perspective to the latest global events and provides in-depth and thought-provoking coverage of the world at large.