Scary map reveals how major coastal cities are rapidly sinking into the sea

Could this be the American Atlantis?New York City isn’t the only metropolis that’s on the descent.An alarming new study by NASA has found that parts of California, including San Francisco and Los Angeles, are sinking into the ocean at a shocking rate, exacerbating the effects of sea level rise.A study detailing this literal downward trend was published earlier this year in the journal Science Advances.“In many parts of the world, like the reclaimed ground beneath San Francisco, the land is moving down faster than the sea itself is going up,” the study’s head author Marin Govorcin, who specializes in remote sensing at NASA’s Propulsion Laboratory, warned in a statement.Accounting for this descent, sea levels — which are on the rise due to climate change — could creep up more than twice as much as previously forecast in Los Angeles and San Francisco in 25 years.This could bode ominous for Golden State, which is the most populous in the US with nearly 40 million people — 68% of whom live on the coastline.The study was devised to investigate which areas were most susceptible to ascending seas.To deduce this, scientists pinpointed specific areas in the state where the land is shifting up or down — a phenomenon called vertical land motion — using satellite radar data gathered by the European Space Agency and motion velocity data from the Global Navigation Satellite System, the Smithsonian Magazine reported.They then compared their data from the same spots between 2015 and 2023 to gauge the changes over time and compiled the results into a map showing the most impacted areas in blue.They found that the Central Valley is the most affected with the land plunging by 8 inches a year due to groundwater withdrawal amid drought.

Meanwhile, the ground in the Bay Area sank by 0.4 inches annually because of sediment compacting.The latter figure may sound “modest,” per the study, but the drop can expose the coastline to waves, which could allow saltwater ...