Considering that New York is a metropolis that never sleeps, how does this keep you up at night? Also, it is lowering.
According to a new study, the Big Apple is sinking due in part to the weight of the skyscrapers that make the concrete wilderness famous.
The decline makes the city more susceptible to rising sea levels and coastal inundation due to climate change, according to the researchers.
The paper, published this month in the journal Earth’s Future, aimed to estimate the impact of the city’s extensive infrastructure on subsidence.
Subsidence is the sinking of land induced by natural processes such as erosion or by human activities such as mineral extraction.
The geologists estimated that the downward pressure exerted by New York’s more than one million buildings totaled 762 billion kilograms.
CNN reported that this was equivalent to approximately 1,900,000 Boeing 747-400s with full fuel tanks.
The report concluded that the average rate of subsidence of America’s financial capital is between one and two millimeters per year.
The study added that some areas constructed on softer granite or artificial landfill were subsiding as much as 4.5 millimeters per year.
But constructing fewer skyscrapers will not solve the issue, according to the main author Tom Parsons.
The primary cause of subsidence in New York and along much of the Eastern Seaboard is tectonic and cannot be stopped,” a US Geological Survey geophysicist explained.
The subsidence will exacerbate the effects of sea level rise caused by rising temperatures and the melting of ice caps around the globe.
