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Because we love nothing more than some ecological doom in the middle of the workday, new geological research reports that New York City is sinking under the weight of its own greatness—literally.
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The island of Manhattan—which plays host to “a deeply concentrated population of 8.4 million people” and 1 million buildings, the latter of which boast a calculated cumulative mass of 1.68 trillion pounds—”faces accelerating inundation risk from sea level rise, subsidence, and increasing storm intensity from natural and anthropogenic causes,” lead researcher and geologist Tom Parsons and his team wrote in the new report. New York City is said to be sinking at a rate of one to two millimeters per year as sea levels continue to rise, an alarming reality that hasn't stopped New Yorkers from flocking to waterfront apartments. That's comparable to the rate of Venice, Italy, often the butt of sinking-city jokes.
Of course, those NYC waterfront areas are "subsiding much faster," the study states, with concern growing for neighborhoods in "lower Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens as well as on Long Island." Several of those areas have already felt the harsh effects of climate change firsthand: "In 2012, Hurricane Sandy forced seawater into the city,” reads the study, with severe coastal flooding hitting everywhere from Brooklyn’s Gerritsen Beach to Queens’ Rockaway peninsula. Similarly, “heavy rainfall from Hurricane Ida in 2021 overwhelmed drainage systems because of heavy runoff within the mostly paved city."
"New York faces significant challenges from flood hazard; the threat of sea level rise is 3–4 times higher than the global average along the Atlantic coast of North America," the report says. Ecological measures are necessary to reduce greenhouse gas in the area, proclaims the study, as those emissions are "reducing the natural wind shear barrier along the U.S. east coast, which will allow more frequent high-intensity hurricane events in the coming decades.”
So sure, next time you're gazing at that gorgeous skyline of ours, remember that the skyscrapers of New York City can illicit as much "ahh!" as "ooh!"