New York sinking due to weight of skyscrapers

The Big Apple could become the Big Atlantis after a new study warned that New York is sinking under the weight of its skyscrapers.

According to the US Geological Survey (USGS), the US metropolis is subsiding at a rate of 1-2mm per year, with some areas like Manhattan and Brooklyn sinking even faster.

The enormous weight of the city’s buildings, which total an estimated 771 million tonnes – roughly equivalent to the “weight of 140 million elephants”, according to The Guardian – is contributing to the subsidence, but other phenomena such as groundwater withdrawal and shifting tectonic plates are also to blame, said the study.

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Rising sea levels and increasingly fierce hurricanes, driven by climate change, already put New York at risk of flooding – but its sinking means the city has “to get planning” for extreme floods in the future.

“Every additional high-rise building constructed at coastal, river, or lakefront settings could contribute to future flood risk,” said the study published in the journal Earth’s Future.

New York’s 1-2mm loss per year puts it at the “same sinking rate as Venice”, said Insider, which experts have suggested “could be entirely underwater by 2100”. And other cities across the US, including New Orleans and Houston, are also sinking at an “even more alarming rate”, said the news site.

Indeed, the study’s authors say New York is “emblematic” of the threat faced by coastal cities globally, which will likely worsen with increasing populations and building density. They added that the risk means there “is a shared global challenge of mitigation against a growing inundation hazard”.

According to a report by C40 Cities, around “800 million people will live in cities where sea levels could rise by more than half a metre” by 2050. It estimates that the cost of these impacts, including rising seas and inland flooding, “could amount to $1 trillion by mid-century”.