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 to seep into the ground and contaminate the aquifers — not to mention accelerate the rate of submersion to unprecedented levels.
“By 2050, sea levels in California are expected to increase between 6 and 14.5 inches (15 and 37 centimeters) higher than year 2000 levels,” the statement reads.
This high water mark could prove devastating for the state. In San Rafael in Northern California, a rise of just one foot could inundate entire neighborhoods, according to NOAA’s Sea Level Rise Viewer, the Daily Mail reported.
If the ocean creeps up by just 20 inches, it could cause $17.9 billion worth of buildings, per a 2018 climate assessment.
Meanwhile, Los Angeles’ Palos Verdes Peninsula descended by four inches every week between September 18 and October 17, 2024. This was caused by landslides that were accelerated by heavy rains in 2023 and early 2024.
“The speed is more than enough to put human life and infrastructure at risk,” Alexander Handwerger, a landslide scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told ABC News.
The NASA result will be used to help inform policy on what to do about the rising seas.
