Some coastal cities are sinking as sea levels rise, new study shows - KXAN.com

sea.indah.link

(KXAN) — Coastal cities across the globe are being forced to deal with the effects of sea level rise. But a recent study indicates some are getting hit with a one-two punch.

According to the study, cities in south, southeastern, and east Asia are building cities so fast along the coast that human interactions such as groundwater pumping and extraction of materials from the ground are causing the land around them to sink.

A majority of cities in this part of the world are also built around major river deltas, which leads to sediment production and are another leading cause of sinkage.

This is all exacerbating the ongoing sea level rise crisis caused by the melting of the polar ice caps.

Jackson Dill and Brandon Miller of CNN report, “sea level rise is happening in many parts of the world. Where the land is rising, sea level rise is not as significant. Not as many people live where the land is rising, however. But where the land sinks, the relative rise of the sea is higher — and unfortunately that is where people tend to live. In fact, more than one in five people live along the coastline where the sea level is increasing at 10 mm (or 0.4 inches) or more per year, despite the fact that it encompasses less than 1% of the world’s coastline.”

River deltas are one of the biggest contributors to sinking land because this is where sediments from upstream are deposited. Sediments congregate near the mouths of the river deltas which is where large metropolises like Jakarta and Bangladesh are located. The weight of the sediments in combination with water pumping causes an acceleration of sinking.

Cities in the U.S. are not exempt from this sinking/sea level rise crisis.

New Orleans and Galveston, Texas, are among the country’s most prone to sea level rise. Dill and Miller report “In Galveston, Texas, sea levels have risen 6.62 mm per year or about one-quarter of an inch per year during the time period of 1957 to 2011. NOAA said this is “equivalent to a change of 2.17 feet in 100 years.”

Our biggest weapons to combat this crisis is mitigating the effects of climate change by reducing our carbon footprint, switching to renewable energies and slowing the consumption of our natural resources.

The Link Lonk


March 11, 2021 at 01:37AM
https://ift.tt/38v27G2

Some coastal cities are sinking as sea levels rise, new study shows - KXAN.com

https://ift.tt/2CoSmg4
Sea