Friday, March 29

The world’s coastal cities are sinking, and climate change has little to do with it


A significant number of coastal cities around the world are sinking much faster than sea level riseso climate change would have very little to do with this phenomenon, according to a recent study published in the journal ‘Geophysical Research Letters’.

The investigation indicates that several of the most important coastal cities in the world, such as Miami, Saigon or Jakarta, are sinking as a result of the changes in your subsoil materials that are produced, in most cases, by human action, such as oil and gas extraction or groundwater pumping. In these cases, as the fluids are extracted, the earth compacts and the weight of the constructions on the surface gradually sinks the ground.

The study has investigated 99 coastal cities around the world, and found that 33 of them are sinking at a rate of more than one centimeter a year, five times the rate of sea level rise. This has forced some countries to take exceptional measures, such as Indonesia, which is moving its capital from Jakarta, on the shores of the Java Sea, to a newly built city on the island of Borneo, in part because the former is sinking more than three centimeters a year.

The authors of the study warn that the current contingency plans for floods carried out by many of these cities are only taking into account the rise in sea level, so these forecasts could cause the cities to suffer unexpected catastrophes and see some of their areas consumed by water much sooner than expected.

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Although the causes of the sinking of cities are varied, the researchers found that the main one in all the cities of the world is the excessive pumping of groundwater, and they point out that if this were controlled, the process could be slowed down. For example, Jakarta itself has gone from sinking 28 centimeters a year to just three centimeters since the Indonesian government created stricter regulations on groundwater extraction.

Other cities affected

The city that is currently sinking the fastest is Tianjin, China, at a rate of 5.22 centimeters per year, followed by Semarang (Indonesia, 3.96 cm), Jakarta itself (3.44 cm), Shanghai ( China, 2.94 cm) and Saigon (Vietnam, 2.81 cm).

The cities most affected by the sinking are in Southeast Asia and, in fact, of the ten cities that sink the most in the world, 9 are divided between Asia and Oceania and only one, Houston, in the United States, belongs to another part of the planet.

As for the cities that are already experiencing the consequences of the sinking, Bombay, in India, stands out, which sinks at a rate of 0.8 centimeters a year and each monsoon season suffers worse floods, both due to rising seas and rains. . In fact, a study carried out in this city identified almost 2,500 buildings in danger from the rise in sea level during high tide by the year 2050.

Image | jonathan ford

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