The scientists said the sinking rate in these locations is faster than the average 1.6 millimetres per year experienced by the rest of NYC.
New York, one of the most populous cities in the US known for its bustling skyscrapers, is sinking under its own weight, a study done by NASA has warned.
The research conducted by scientists from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Rutgers University has pinpointed various locations in the city which are sinking at varying rates than the whole city.
The scientists said the sinking rate in these locations is faster than the average 1.6 millimetres per year experienced by the rest of NYC.
Among the areas which have been observed to be sinking faster are LaGuardia Airport, Arthur Ashe Stadium and Coney Island.
A city sitting atop ancient glacier that is now retreating
The researchers found that from 2016 to 2023, LaGuardia’s runways and Arthur Ashe Stadium was sinking at 3.7 and 4.6 millimetres per year, respectively.
While the whole city is sinking under the weight of skyscrapers, the newly identified hotspots are dipping because they sit atop an ancient glacier that is retreating.
And this is happening because of dual factors—natural and human, the study noted.
The ancient glacier covered most of New England about 24,000 years ago, and a wall of ice more than a mile high covered what is today Albany in upstate New York.
Some areas are getting uplifted
Interestingly, the team also found areas which are moving up.
East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and Woodside, Queens areas were found to be rising by about 1.6 mm and 6.9 mm per year respectively.
The study’s co-author Robert Kopp of Rutgers University believe that groundwater pumping and injection wells used to treat polluted water may have played a role in the uplift of these areas, but added that further investigation is needed.
The study was done by a team of NASA scientists and researchers at Rutgers University in New Jersey to analyse the 302.6-square-mile city of five boroughs: Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx and Staten Island.
They measured the upward and downward vertical land motion, or the uplift and subsidence, in New York City from 2016 to 2023.
The work involved using an interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) remote sensing technique, which combines two or more 3D observations of the same region to reveal surface motion or topography.
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