Explained: Why New York is sinking under its own weight

New York City is slowly sinking under its own weight.

A study in the journal Earth’s Future found the city sinking at a rate of 1 to 2 millimetres per year.

But why is this happening? And what can be done about it?

Let’s take a closer look:

According to the website Interesting Engineering, this comes as a result of a phenomenon known as subsidence.

This can happen with heavy objects either settle over time or changes in the Earth make things sink into the ground.

This is essentially what happened in Uttarakhand’s Joshimath.

According to Phys.org, Pei-Chin Wu, Meng Wei, Steven D’Hondt and Tom Parsons reached the conclusion by first calculating the mass of all the buildings in New York.

The mass of over 1 million buildings came to 1.68 trillion pounds, as per Science Alert.

The authors then divided the city into a grid of 100-by-100-meter squares and converted building mass to downward pressure by factoring in the pull of gravity.

Though their model gave different subsidence rates for various parts of the city – with clay-rich soils and artificial fills more prone compared to sand deposits and bed rock –the average for the entire city is 1 to 2 millimeters per year.

According to Science Alert, certain parts of the city are sinking as fast as the quickest rates observed at which tectonic plates rebound when glaciers melt.

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“The combination of tectonic and subsidence, sea level rise, and increasing hurricane intensity imply an accelerating problem along coastal and riverfront areas,” the paper warned, as per India Today.

The study concluded that New York City has been sinking for some time and will continue to do so in the future.

New York is home to around eight million people.

Science Alert quoted Parsons, who is a geologist as saying, “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.”

“New York is emblematic of growing coastal cities all over the world that are observed to be subsiding, meaning there is a shared global challenge of mitigation against a growing inundation hazard,” the researchers concluded.

In February, researchers said China, United States and India are among the countries most vulnerable to climate change.

Another report said Mumbai, Shanghai, Dhaka, Bangkok, Jakarta, Maputo, Lagos, Cairo, London, Copenhagen, New York, Los Angeles, Buenos Aires, and Santiago are among the cities most threatened by the sea level rise.

With inputs from agencies

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