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NEW YORK CITY IS SINKING DUE TO ITS MILLION-PLUS BUILDINGS, STUDY SAYS

By Jacopo Prisco, CNN
Updated 12:16 PM EDT, Tue May 23, 2023

02:27 - Source: CNN
VIDEO: New York City is sinking as sea levels rise

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CNN  — 

New York City is sinking under the collective weight of all of its buildings, a
new study has found.

This gradual process could spell trouble for a city around which the sea level
has been rising more than twice as fast as the global rate — and is projected to
rise between 8 inches and 30 inches by 2050.

What’s more, scientists expect more frequent and extreme rainfall events such as
nor’easters and hurricanes due to the human-fueled climate crisis.

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“We’re a ways off from the ocean simply moving in,” said lead study author Tom
Parsons, a research geophysicist at the US Geological Survey. “But we’ve had a
couple of major hurricane events with Sandy and Ida in New York where heavy
rainfall caused inundation in the city, and some of the effects of urbanization
have allowed water to come in.”

The paper, published in the journal Earth’s Future, aims to show how high-rise
buildings in coastal, riverfront or lakefront areas could contribute to future
flood risk and that measures should be taken to mitigate the potentially
hazardous impacts.


SINKING CITY RISKS — AND A MYSTERY

The researchers calculated the mass of the 1,084,954 buildings that existed
across the five boroughs of New York City at the time, reaching the conclusion
that they weighed about 1.68 trillion pounds (762 billion kilograms) —
equivalent to roughly 1.9 million fully loaded Boeing 747-400s.

The study team then used simulations to calculate the effects of that weight on
the ground, comparing that with satellite data showing actual surface geology.
That analysis revealed the rate at which the city is sinking: “The average is
about 1 to 2 millimeters a year, with some areas of greater subsidence that are
up to about 4½   millimeters a year,” Parsons said.

Subsidence is the technical term for the sinking or settling of Earth’s surface
due to natural or artificial causes. A September 2022 study found that 44 of the
48 most populous coastal cities have areas that are sinking faster than sea
levels are rising. This latest study’s novel approach is to take into account
specifically the weight of New York City’s buildings and how they are
contributing to the subsidence of the land beneath them.

However, not all of the sinking is due to the buildings. “We could see some
correspondence where there’s construction on very soft soils and artificial
fill,” Parsons said. “Other places, we see subsidence that’s difficult to
explain. And there’s a lot of different causes of it, such as post glacial
relaxation that happened after the last ice age, or groundwater pumping.”

Some areas of lower Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens are among those that are
sinking at a faster than average rate, according to the study.

“Some of that seems to correspond with construction projects going on,” Parsons
said. “But we also see subsidence on the north end of Staten Island that I can’t
figure out an explanation for, and I’ve looked into all kinds of different
things — so that still remains a mystery.”


MITIGATING RISK AROUND SINKING CITIES

Subsidence can pose an even earlier flooding threat than sea level rise, the
research suggests, and not just in New York City. “It’s a global issue. My
coauthors from the University of Rhode Island looked at 99 cities around the
world, not only coastal but inland as well, and the vast majority of them have
subsidence issues,” said Parsons, citing the case of Jakarta, which is sinking
so fast that the Indonesian government is planning to build a new capital city
elsewhere.

Amanda Perobelli/Reuters
The sea level around New York City has been rising more than twice as fast as
the global rate.

“We know that global sea levels are rising and shorelines are changing, and that
it is critical to understanding the impact of human activities, such as
greenhouse gas emissions, on our warming world,” said geophysicist Sophie
Coulson, a postdoctoral fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory who was not
involved in the study. “This research takes a look at an important human factor
that has only recently come into focus — the effect of urban building loads on
coastal land subsidence.”

The authors, she added, use a clever combination of computer modeling, satellite
measurements and GPS data to estimate the short- and long-term sinking rates of
different areas of the city and identify the areas most at risk.

“New York City is among the most densely populated coastal areas in the world,
with a large portion of its critical infrastructure constructed in low-lying
coastal areas,” she said.

“Understanding how and why the landscape is changing, and identifying areas most
vulnerable to flooding is essential for making the right preparations to
mitigate future sea level rise.”

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