As per a US Geological Survey research geophysicist named Tom Parsons, San Francisco is sinking into our planet’s soil. NBC Bay Area reported that the geophysicist examined each and every building in the Bay Area, using satellite images captured by ESA’s Sentinel 1 satellite.
Most of the settling appears to have taken place in the downtown, as most of the staggering weight and density of the buildings are located in that area. As per The Weather Channel, Millennium Tower is also referred to as the “Leaning Tower of San Francisco” due to the tilt that increases every year since its inception in 2009, and NBC says it’s the third heaviest building in the city at an estimated 686 million pounds.
Several reasons behind sinking
Back in 2018, a large crack was found in the building after residents reported a loud noise. Experts suggest many issues may be causing the city to sink, such as the loss of groundwater because new construction isn’t rooted in bedrock.
Parsons told NBC that the combined weight of all the downtown buildings is enough to affect an earthquake fault. “If you have all of this going on when you’re right near the waterline, in some cases in San Francisco, then you have to worry about big storms that sea level comes up and inundation more frequently,” Parsons told NBC.
He also says that he’ll be studying Manhattan next, as per NBC, to further study the effects of sinking on coastal areas in the wake of rising sea levels.
Global warming increasing at alarming pace
Previously, the nonprofit Climate Central released new visualizations that depict how much land will be submerged in water due to rising sea levels, resulting from a modest amount of global warming. The images show several landmarks across the globe at the present day, contrasted with the flooding that is possible if global warming continues at the same pace.
An estimated 10% of the land where the world’s current population lives could be submerged in water by the year 2100. At that point, our planet will exceed the 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit warming threshold.
