According to NASA research, New York City, one of the most populated cities in the United States famed for its busy skyscrapers, is sinking under its own weight. Scientists from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Rutgers University conducted research that identified numerous spots in the city that are sinking at different rates than the rest of the metropolis. According to the scientists, the sinking rate in these areas is quicker than the citywide average of 1.6 mm each year.
A team of NASA scientists and researchers from Rutgers University in New Jersey conducted the investigation on the 302.6-square-mile city
LaGuardia Airport, Arthur Ashe Stadium, and Coney Island are among the sites that have been documented to sink faster. The researchers discovered that from 2016 through 2023, the runways at LaGuardia Airport and Arthur Ashe Stadium were sinking at 3.7 and 4.6 mm per year, respectively. While the city as a whole is sinking under the weight of skyscrapers, the newly found hotspots are rising because they sit on a receding glacier. According to the study, this is due to both natural and human factors. About 24,000 years ago, an ancient glacier blanketed most of New England, and a wall of ice more than a mile high buried what is now Albany in upstate New York.
Notably, the researchers discovered some places that are encouraging. East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and Woodside, Queens were discovered to be rising by 1.6 and 6.9 mm each year, respectively. The study’s co-author, Rutgers University’s Robert Kopp, believes that groundwater pumping and injection wells used to clean dirty water may have played a part in the elevation of these places, but that more research is needed. A team of NASA scientists and researchers from Rutgers University in New Jersey conducted the investigation on the 302.6-square-mile city of five boroughs: Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Staten Island.
From 2016 through 2023, they measured the upward and downward vertical ground motion, often known as uplift and subsidence, in New York City. The researchers used an interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) remote sensing approach to show surface mobility or topography by combining two or more 3D measurements of the same region.
