Since hundreds of years water levels have been rising and New York City is sinking, one day the city may disappear.
New York City is one of the most important city in the world, having massive buildings, hosting lots of festivals and sports events. People don’t realize that those big structures increase the city’s weight. New York City is sinking. “The average is about 1 to 2 millimeters a year, with some areas of greater subsidence that are up to about 4½ millimeters a year,” said Parsons, an expert who calculates and estimates events from earthquakes, tsunamis and changes of the ground below us. It may not sound like much but it can exacerbate flooding and cause water problems all over the territory because of potential storms.
Sinking is a natural process that can happen anywhere where the ground is compressed but a study published by the Earth Future estimates that the weight above the ground accelerates the process itself. New York City’s sinking may also be related to the retreating of glaciers from the last Ice Age or even from the intensive water pumping done by the state.
24, 000 years ago during the Ice Age, an ice sheet covered New England. Underneath the weight of the ice, the land began to sink just like when you put a bowling ball on a cushion. Meanwhile, areas around the ice sheet moved upward to make it even, including New York City. Now that all the ice has melted, the city is sinking back down to its original place.
The problem that New York City is facing does not only stop here because the sea levels have also been rising for hundreds of years. The water level may rise between 8 to 30 inches by 2050, which is twice more than the global rate. “It’s inevitable. The ground is going down, and the water’s coming up. At some point, those two levels will meet,” said Parsons.
The sea rising also causes more damage when the storms, which are happening every year in the South of The United States, hit. “It’s kind of adding to the background state on which these storms act. There’s more water to slosh around,” said Buzzanga. Engineers are proposing infrastructures to protect New Yorkers’ homes but not every civilian has the money to flood-proof their homes.
A September 2022 study found out that 44 of the 48 most populous coastal cities have areas that are sinking faster than the sea levels are rising. Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn are among the cities that are sinking faster than the average. It will take hundreds of years before New York City becomes America’s version of Venice but the problem does not have to be ignored.
