NASA’s Alarming Discovery: Some Cities Are Sinking Faster Than the Oceans Are Rising – The Daily Galaxy –Great Discoveries Channel

NASA’s latest discovery reveals that sinking land is accelerating sea level rise, putting coastal cities at risk far sooner than expected.A new NASA-led study has uncovered a hidden threat worsening sea level rise along the world’s coastlines. While melting glaciers and climate change have long been blamed for rising seas, land itself is also moving, in some cases sinking faster than the water is rising. Using satellite data, researchers have pinpointed locations where the ground is subsiding at alarming rates, putting coastal cities at risk of flooding far sooner than expected. The discovery forces a reassessment of global sea level projections, highlighting that some regions could face double the previously estimated rise by 2050.A recent study, published on January 29, 2025, in Science Advances, examines how vertical land motion—the rising and sinking of Earth’s surface—affects local sea level projections. The research, led by Marin Govorcin of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), used interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) from ESA’s Sentinel-1 satellites to track land elevation changes along California’s coast from 2015 to 2023.Their findings reveal a disturbing trend: many areas are sinking at rates exceeding 0.4 inches (10 millimeters) per year, significantly worsening the impact of sea level rise. In places like San Francisco Bay, where land is compacting, local sea levels could rise more than 17 inches (45 cm) by 2050—more than double previous estimates based solely on ocean levels. The study highlights the critical need to factor in land movement when predicting future flooding risks.Land subsidence is not just caused by natural tectonic shifts—human activities are playing a major role in making coastal land sink faster than ever before. Practices such as groundwater extraction, oil and gas drilling, and rapid urbanization are all contributing to this hidden crisis.“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,” explains Marin Govorcin, lead author of the study. This means that in some locations, coastal defenses designed for projected sea level rise may already be outdated, leaving cities vulnerable to flooding sooner than expected.The study also found uplift hot spots—places where land is rising instead of sinking. Areas like Santa Barbara and Long Beach are experiencing ground uplift due to replenishing groundwater basins and fluid injection from oil production. However, these changes are highly localized and unpredictable, making it difficult to factor them into large-scale climate models.By mapping land movement along over 1,000 miles of California’s coastline, NASA and NOAA researchers identified high-risk zones where subsidence is amplifying the effects of sea level rise. The San Francisco Bay Area is among the most vulnerable regions, particularly in low-lying areas such as San Rafael, Corte Madera, Foster City, and Bay Farm Island, where land is sinking at more than 0.4 inches per year.In these areas, previous sea level rise estimates based solely on ocean levels had underestimated the real threat. If current trends continue, flooding events that were once expected decades from now could arrive within the next 25 years. Cities like Los Angeles and San Diego also face challenges, where unpredictable human activities like hydrocarbon extraction add uncertainty to sea level projections.Beyond urban centers, California’s Central Valley is experiencing some of the fastest sinking rates in the state. In parts of the valley, land is dropping as much as 8 inches (20 cm) per year, primarily due to excessive groundwater withdrawal during droughts. When underground water levels drop, the land above compresses and sinks permanently, worsening the long-term effects of sea level rise.In addition to subsidence, scientists also tracked slow-moving landslides along California’s rugged coastline, particularly in areas like Big Sur and the Palos Verdes Peninsula. As land shifts, it can create localized sinking hotspots that further destabilize coastal communities. In Northern California, erosion-driven sinking is occurring in marshlands and lagoons surrounding San Francisco and Monterey Bays—critical ecosystems that act as natural flood barriers.Understanding land motion is now essential for predicting the true impacts of sea level rise. NASA’s OPERA (Observational Products for End-Users from Remote Sensing Analysis) project is using satellite-based monitoring to track elevational changes across North America. This data will help governments and city planners make informed decisions about coastal resilience.The upcoming NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) mission, a joint project with India’s space agency, will further enhance global monitoring by providing high-resolution land motion data in near real-time. These advancements could help predict where and when the next major subsidence events will occur, potentially saving lives and billions of dollars in infrastructure damage.Comment Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

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