New York is sinking. Skyscrapers weigh 140 million elephants

The American city of New York is sinking at a rate of 1 to 2 millimeters per year, among other things, the weight of the glass skyscrapers in the middle. Some parts of the city are flooding at twice the rate. This trend is exacerbating the effects of sea level rise and increasing the risk of flooding for New Yorkers. it states Stady It was published in the trade journal Earth’s Future, which he wrote about today Watchman.

The level of the world’s oceans is rising due to global warming, including melting glaciers. Since 1950, the researchers said, the water level along New York’s beaches has risen by about 22 centimeters. City subsidence exacerbates the risks posed by rising ocean levels. Large storm-driven floods could be four times more common by the end of the century than they are now, due to a combination of rising sea levels and more intense hurricanes due to climate change, according to a study by The Guardian.

Scientists have calculated that the city’s structures, which include the famous Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building, weigh a total of 7.64 trillion kilograms. The Guardian compares this weight to that of 140 million elephants, and one elephant weighs about five tons. For the calculation, the scientists used the floor plans of the houses, the weight of the materials from which they were built, and also took into account the use of the buildings and thus the number of people in them.

This massive weight drives the mix of different materials found in New York’s bedrock. While many of the largest buildings are on solid rock foundations such as shale, some stand on a mixture of sand and clay. This contributes to the naturally occurring subsidence along much of the east coast of the US as bedrock responds to the retreat of massive glaciers after the end of the last Ice Age, the Guardian explains.

“You don’t need to worry right away, but there is a process going on here that increases the risk of inundation during floods,” said USGS geophysicist Tom Parsons, who led the new research. “The softer the soil, the greater the compaction of the buildings. It wasn’t wrong to build such large buildings in New York, but we have to remember that every time you build something there, you compress the soil a little bit more,” Parsons added.