If New York is a city that never sleeps, how does that help you stay awake at night? It also sinks. A new study has found that the Big Apple is gradually decreasing in part due to the weight of the skyscrapers that made the concrete jungle famous. The decline has made the metropolis more vulnerable to rising sea levels and coastal flooding caused by climate change, the researchers said. An article published this month in The magazine The Future of the Worldtried to assess how the city’s massive infrastructure affected the collapse.

Subsidence is the lowering of a land mass caused by natural processes such as erosion or human activities such as mining. Geologists estimate that more than a million buildings in New York City exert a combined pressure of 1.68 trillion pounds (762 billion kilograms) on the ground. CNN reports that this is equivalent to about 1.9 million fully fueled Boeing 747-400s.

The report concluded that America’s financial capital is falling on average one to two millimeters per year. The study adds that some areas built on softer rocks or man-made dumps are settled at four and a half millimeters per year. But lead author Tom Parsons told AFP that building fewer skyscrapers won’t solve the problem.

“The main cause of collapse in New York and much of the East Coast is tectonic and unstoppable,” said a geophysicist from the US Geological Survey.

The collapse could exacerbate the effects of rising temperatures and rising sea levels caused by the melting of glaciers around the world. Sea Level Rise.org says the water level around New York is 9 inches higher than it was in 1950. The city government predicts that by 2050, surrounding waters will increase by 20 to 30 inches.

The government spends billions of dollars building seawalls, roads and improving drainage to mitigate risks. But the lowlands have already felt the brunt of the devastating flooding from the more intense storms. In 2012 Hurricane Sandy killed more than 40 New Yorkers, destroyed nearly 300 homes and left tens of thousands without electricity.

More than a dozen people died in New York City due to Hurricane Ida in 2021, many of whom were unable to escape from flooded basements. It’s impossible to say when parts of New York will be flooded, but that will happen, Parsons said.

“Even an approximate duration is very difficult to predict, because while the city’s collapse is relatively stable, sea-level rise estimates are uncertain and depend on expected future greenhouse gas emission rates,” he told AFP.

New York isn’t the only major city in the world to sink. The collapse and rising water levels have raised fears that Venice could one day be completely submerged. And Jakarta is sinking at such an alarming rate due to excessive groundwater extraction that it is overtaking the Indonesian capital. Source