America’s coastal cities are sinking, putting more people at risk for flooding than urban planners might have expected with sea level rise alone. The gradual sinking of land, also known as land subsidence, could cause flooding to reach far more communities than previously anticipated, according to new research published today in the journal Nature. The study looked at 32 major cities along the US shoreline, and forecasted future flooding with climate change.
“This represents a large new dataset that will hopefully be useful to these communities for planning their responses to this incoming sea level rise,” says Eric Lindsey, an assistant professor at the University of New Mexico who has studied land subsidence and sea level rise and was not involved in this new paper. The study’s flood forecast is likely conservative.