Several coastal cities around the United States are “disappearing” into the ground, according to new research, which could further exacerbate complications of sea level rise in the near future.
A considerable amount of land in 32 U.S. coastal cities could be at risk of flooding by 2050 due to subsidence, the gradual caving in or sinking of an area of land, according to a paper published Wednesday in Nature.
The continuous loss of land will affect most coastal cities, Leonard Ohenhen, a Ph.D. candidate at Virginia Tech University specializing in coastal vulnerability and large-scale land subsidence, told ABC News.
Large cities surrounded by water — such as Boston, New Orleans and San Francisco — will be among the regions that could experience flooding in the near future due to land elevation changes combined with sea level rise — about 4 millimeters per year, said Ohenhen, who authored the paper.
Up to 273,000 people and 171,000 properties in coastal regions around the U.S. could be impacted, according to the paper’s findings.
Coastal areas with higher elevation levels and lower […]
Sad about the coastal cities, but most of it is due to mankind’s obliviousness and stupidity by leaders to deny that this was going to happen. But an outgrowth of this is that regular people, who live in safe places, are paying higher and higher homeowner insurance rates because those who insist on living on the edge of the ocean refuse to pay higher insurance as they should! The rest of the country should not be subsidizing their stupidity and stubbornness! Terri Quint