Rising and Sinking Cities
A new study finds that parts of many coastal cities are sinking more quickly than the rise in sea level. The finding means that those communities are now doubly threatened, and not just from the rising tides caused by glacial melt and the thermal expansion of the waters due to global heating.
An international team of researchers used satellite-based radar to measure how much the land is sinking around 48 of the world’s largest seaside cities. They found that all of the cities studied had some amount of land subsidence, with some areas sinking faster than the seas were rising. Land subsidence is caused by the extraction of groundwater and natural gas, and by the massive weight of tall buildings and other structures.
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