I wonder what those giant egg-like things are...
(oops sorry, wrong movie)
From the U.S. Geological Survey:
...Estimated global groundwater depletion during 1900–2008 totals ~4,500 km3, equivalent to a sea-level rise of 12.6 mm (>6% of the total). Furthermore, the rate of groundwater depletion has increased markedly since about 1950, with maximum rates occurring during the most recent period (2000–2008), when it averaged ~145 km3/yr (equivalent to 0.40 mm/yr of sea-level rise, or 13% of the reported rate of 3.1 mm/yr during this recent period)....
From Asia Times, May 10:
Cities unable to stop or control sinking must adapt – especially in densely populated coastal areas where dikes are almost universal
Across the world, many cities are slowly sinking. Most are on the coast, including tropical megacities like Jakarta in Indonesia or Manila in the Philippines, or places like New Orleans, Vancouver or much of the Netherlands. Other sinking cities, like Mexico City and many of those in China, can be well inland. Yet this still remains a widely overlooked hazard.
In my three decades assessing this topic, I have reviewed evidence of subsidence in cities around the world. The problem is especially significant in Asia, where about 60% of the world’s population lives and the cities are growing rapidly. However, some cities have also shown there are things that can be done to stop subsidence.
The problem is illustrated by a recent study by researchers in China which found more than a third of the country’s urban population – some 270 million people – living in sinking cities.
The authors analyzed satellite-derived data from 2015 to 2022 across China’s 82 most important cities to produce accurate and consistent maps of vertical land movement. Consistently measuring subsidence in all these cities, with a collective population of nearly 700 million people, is a great achievement.
They found that 37 of the 82 cities they looked at are sinking, and nearly 70 million people are experiencing rapid subsidence of 10mm a year or more. This may not sound much but the subsidence accumulates over time and can damage infrastructure and buildings, and make floods more dangerous.
Where China’s sinking cities are found:
Related:
How Hurricanes Turn Nature Upside DownNot saying the ground under Mexico City is what caused the overpass collapse. This article just happened to be published April 22 and was in the queue for linking.
As with New Orleans—built below sea level in a very active hurricane zone, imagine having the risk of the 1953 North Sea Flood, 2500 dead, two or three times per year—if you could go back in time and tell folks in Mexico City "Don't build here", before it became one of the world's great conurbations with 22 million residents, you could remove the risk of hundreds of thousands dead the next time a magnitude 8.0 earthquake hits.
But you can't.
We had a post entitled "Watching the Wind at Ventusky - UPDATED" which formerly filled this spot in the queue that we could not get to display correctly despite repeated attempts. So we took it down.
As far as I can recall this is the first time in over 20,000 posts that we've unpublished a posting.
Usually if something we put up contains a factual error, we correct it and note the correction. If it is unflattering to ego/judgement/image we leave it up, big picture: who cares? If there are typos we'll sneak back at night (or whenever we hear about it) to change them just for ease of reading.
But we don't pull whole posts, it just isn't done, and I'm a bit shaken by the experience.
So here are a couple more posts about poop.
Let the cleansing ocean waters wash away the.....oh wait, that was our intro for a San Francisco post, what with with the human dookie on the sidewalks and all.And especially a repost from May 2021:Regarding sea level rise, it's been going on for a while...
"Global Warming, It’s Always a Shore Thing"
