Daily Times

A new study has revealed that the US financial capital New York City is sinking because of the extraordinary weight of its skyscrapers, increasing the risk of inundation as global warming accelerates deglaciation.

According to the researchers, the city is descending by approximately 1-2mm each year on average, with some areas of New York City sinking at double this rate.

The water around New York City has increased about 9 inches or 22 cm since 1950 and the events of major flooding could be more severe by the end of the century than now due to climate change which is causing sea levels to rise and culminating in severe weather conditions such as hurricanes.

Researchers wrote in the study published in the Earth’s Future journal: “A deeply concentrated population of 8.4 million people faces varying degrees of hazard from inundation in New York City.”

The researchers went on to say that the risks faced by New York City will be shared by many other coastal cities around the world as the climate crisis intensifies.

“The combination of tectonic and anthropogenic subsidence, sea level rise, and increasing hurricane intensity imply an accelerating problem along coastal and riverfront areas,” they said.

The experts involved in the study calculated the city’s structures, which include the famous Empire State Building and Chrysler Building, weighing a total of 1.68 trillion lbs.

Parts of lower Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island all showed signs of subsidence, the study said.

“As coastal cities grow globally, the combination of construction densification and sea level rise implies increasing inundation hazard,” a summary of the research said.

“The point of the paper is to raise awareness that every additional high-rise building constructed at coastal, river, or lakefront settings could contribute to future flood risk, and that mitigation strategies may need to be included.”

These enormous structures are forcing the ground to go downwards. There are several materials used which are contributing to the sinking such as bedrock, a mixture of other sands, and clays. This sinking effect is taking place anywhere along the US east coast.

Tom Parsons, a geophysicist at the US Geological Survey, and lead researcher said: “It’s not something to panic about immediately but there’s this ongoing process that increases the risk of inundation from flooding,”

“The softer the soil, the more compression there is from the buildings. It wasn’t a mistake to build such large buildings in New York but we’ve just got to keep in mind every time you build something there you push down the ground a little bit more.”

Back in 2012, New York City was hit by a Hurricane named Sandy that inundated parts of the subways and caused devastation including power cuts. After that, another hurricane Ida struck the city leading to the drowning of several people. According to the scientists, both of the events were due to climate change issues.

“New York and other coastal cities have to get planning for this. If you get repeated exposure to seawater, you can corrode steel and destabilize buildings, which you clearly don’t want. Flooding also kills people, too, which is probably the greatest concern,” Parson said.