New York City is sinking due to skyscraper weight, rising sea levels

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Research published in the Earth’s Future journal suggests that New York City is partially sinking as a result of the extraordinary weight of its famous skyscrapers, worsening the flooding threat from the rising seas.

The water level around NYC is increasing by approximately 1-2mm each year on average, with some areas of the city sinking at double this rate, according to researchers, who added that the impact of sea level rise is being accelerated by the sinking. 

The water that surrounds New York City has risen by about 9 inches or 22 cm since 1950, and major flooding events could happen up to four times more than now by the end of the century because of rise in sea levels and climate-change-strengthened hurricanes combined. 

Climatologists and weather experts have already debunked the myth that climate change makes cyclones and harsh storms occur more often. Instead, they stated that they make them more destructive and harsher. 

“A deeply concentrated population of 8.4 million people faces varying degrees of hazard from inundation in New York City,” researchers stated, adding that other coastal cities around the world will be as affected as the climate crisis worsens. “The combination of tectonic and anthropogenic subsidence, sea level rise, and increasing hurricane intensity imply an accelerating problem along coastal and riverfront areas,” they clarified.

According to the researchers, the city’s structures, including the famous Empire State Building and Chrysler Building, weigh a total of 1.68 trillion lbs - roughly equivalent to the weight of 140 million elephants.

Even though many of the largest buildings are placed upon solid bedrock, there is a mixture of other sands and clays that have been built over, which add to the sinking effect already naturally occurring along much of the US east coast as the land reacts to the retreat of huge glaciers after the end of the last ice age.

Tom Parsons, a geophysicist at the US Geological Survey, who managed and led the research 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.”

When New York was hit by Hurricane Sandy in 2012, parts of the subway were flooded which caused massive damage and power blackouts. Then, in 2021, Hurricane Ida caused several people to die in its floods and scientists claim both hurricanes were strengthened by the effects of global warming.

Parsons believes that other coastal cities alongside New York “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.”