But when we discuss a specific location, this is only part of the reason for the rise of relative sea level here.” She said that land subsidence caused by various factors is another important factor to consider.
“We input the weight of all buildings in this city,” said Tom Parsons, a geophysicist at the United States Geological Survey and the main author of the study.
“For example, in Lower Manhattan, we built a mountain here, and the weight of all buildings is pushing down the land.” The first step of the researchers is to analyze the weight of the city, This means they need to count all the buildings in New York City – all 1084954 buildings in the five boroughs.
In order to accommodate so many people, residential and commercial buildings are increasing year by year.
Parsons and colleagues plotted a map of the city on the grid and then consulted a database that includes the floor area and total height of each building in the city.
Author | Translated by Meghan Bartels | Edited by Zeng Xinxin | As of 2020, New York City has a population of 8.8 million, making it currently the most densely populated city in the United States.
Parsons said: “This weight is not completely accurate, but it gives us a general understanding of the density of buildings.” (In order to simplify the calculation, the research team did not consider the weight of other surface transportation infrastructure.) Next, the researchers drew a Geologic map of New York City
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Jacky Austermann, a geophysicist at Columbia University who was not involved in the study, said: “Most people believe that the melting of ice is responsible for the rise of Eustatic sea level.
According to the Building code, the researchers estimated the weight of each grid square, and estimated that the total weight of all buildings in New York City was about 764 billion kilograms.
Osterman added, “If you stand on a coastline, whether it’s land subsidence or sea level rise, it can lead to floods.” In this new study, scientists attempt to understand how the weight of a city itself causes relative sea level rise, and New York City happens to have many areas worth studying.
On May 8th, a new study published in Earth’s Future showed that the weight of over 1 million buildings is causing the land to sink and causing relative sea levels to rise, exacerbating the local flood risk.
Image source: The weight of approximately 1.1 million buildings in Pixabay is slowly sinking New York.
