Geological research published in Earth's Future journal earlier this month revealed that the weight of skyscrapers in New York City (NYC) is causing the Big Apple to sink lower into its surrounding bodies of water at a rate of one to two millimeters a year, with some areas subsiding much faster.
The more than one million buildings in NYC, which include the iconic Empire State Building and Chrysler Building, were found to weigh nearly 1.7 trillion pounds, which is roughly the equivalent of 140 million elephants.
According to lead researcher and geologist Tom Parsons of the United States Geological Survey, the gradual descent makes NYC extremely vulnerable to natural disasters, with lower Manhattan particularly found to be at the highest risk. Brooklyn and Queens are also areas of concern.
"New York faces significant challenges from flood hazard; the threat of sea level rise is three to four times higher than the global average along the Atlantic coast of North America … A deeply concentrated population of 8.4 million people faces varying degrees of hazard from inundation in New York City," Parsons and his team wrote in the report.
The research pointed out that NYC has already seen these harsh effects starting more than a decade ago.
"Two recent hurricanes caused casualties and heavy damage in New York City. In 2012, Hurricane Sandy forced seawater into the city, whereas heavy rainfall from Hurricane Ida in 2021 overwhelmed drainage systems because of heavy runoff within the mostly paved city," the authors cited and added that the risks faced by the Big Apple will be shared by many other coastal cities around the world as the climate crisis deepens.
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"The combination of tectonic and anthropogenic subsidence, sea level rise and increasing hurricane intensity imply an accelerating problem along coastal and riverfront areas," they wrote.
The research also warned that repeated exposure of building foundations to salt water can corrode reinforcing steel and chemically weaken concrete, which could cause structural weakening.
Parsons also mentioned that the threat of severe storms is more likely than it was years ago and that greenhouse gas appears to be reducing the natural wind shear barrier along the U.S. East Coast, "which will allow more frequent high-intensity hurricane events in the coming decades."
Also, NYC is ranked third in the world in terms of future exposed assets to coastal flooding and 90 percent of the 67,400 structures in the expanded post-Hurricane Sandy flood-risk areas have not been built to floodplain standards. (Related: California sinking ONE FOOT each year from groundwater depletion.)
Scientist's unorthodox proposal: Turn NYC into a modern Venice
Climate experts have expressed fear that New York will be underwater in less than 80 years.
"There could be as much as six feet of sea level rise [give or take] by the end of the century … then we will have a real problem on our hands in the city," said geophysicist Klaus Jacob, a professor emeritus at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.
He told the New York Post that the best way to deal with rising sea levels combined with storm surges would be, of course, retreating to higher ground. However, moving skyscrapers to higher ground would be impossible. And so, the scientist came up with an unorthodox proposal to manage what might come around at the turn of the century – turn lower Manhattan into a "modern Venice" and accept that its thoroughfares will become canals that people can live and work on.
"If we want to keep skyscrapers and other buildings functioning, they will need to become mini-islands that are standing in the water," Jacob said. "They will have to be serviced not by taxis on wheels, but instead by amphibian boats. Barges will have to come to pick up the garbage. And we need more high lines that connect the various buildings with each other."
Jacob insisted that the threat needs to be taken more seriously and accommodations need to start being made now. "All the infrastructure, electric, gas, communication, it needs to be waterproofed," he recommended.
The Army Corps of Engineers is proposing a $52 billion construction of coastal seawalls to mitigate the looming circumstances, but Jacob fears that the "piecemeal" approach would not address the root cause of the problem.
"That is a finite duration … sooner or later, we will run out of our means and ways to deal with those issues," he said. "Now that's not happening tomorrow, but a few decades after tomorrow and from [year] 2100 on, it will get serious."
Find more related stories at Collapse.news.
Watch the video below that talks about sinking coasts worldwide.
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