Image: Architectural Digest
A study has unveiled that New York City is sinking gradually due to the weight of its skyscrapers. This phenomenon is also making the city to face rising sea levels and coastal flooding due to the climate change.
Researchers have recently published a paper on how the heavy infrastructure of the city is impacting subsidence, a process of sinking of land caused by either human activity like mineral extraction or natural process such as erosion.
Geologists have estimated that New York holds more than one million buildings that weigh more than 762 billion kilograms.
CNN reports that this weight is equivalent to1.9 million completely fuelled Boeing 747-400s. The report further says that New York City city is sinking at a. Average rate of one to two millimetres annually.
A geophysicist at the US Geological Survey says, “The primary cause of subsidence in New York and along much of the Eastern Seaboard is tectonic and cannot be stopped.”
