Thermal expansion and melting glaciers endanger some of the world’s largest urban centers…

China’s coastal megacities are at particular risk.

Across New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, and Bengaluru, a quiet crisis is threatening the stability of India’s urban infrastructure. New satellite-based research published in Nature Sustainability reveals that nearly 900 square kilometres of land in these five megacities is sinking, putting millions of residents and thousands of buildings at risk of structural damage. The study tracked ground deformation from 2015 to 2023 and found subsidence rates exceeding four millimetres per year.

Sinking land is quietly destabilizing urban infrastructure in India's largest cities, putting thousands of buildings and millions of people at risk, according to Virginia Tech scientists.

Building damage and collapse is an emerging problem, particularly in large cities in developing countries. Although engineering shortcomings are often blamed, land subsidence is an underappreciated cu...

Rising heat kills one person a minute worldwide, New reason for rapid global temp surge, Faster sea level rise threatens China’s coastal megacities, Facing widespread death of coral reefs, Hurricane M...

Thermal expansion and melting glaciers endanger some of the world’s largest urban centers…

Thermal expansion and melting glaciers endanger some of the world’s largest urban centers…

Sinking land is quietly destabilizing urban infrastructure in India's largest cities, putting thousands of buildings and millions of people at risk, according to Virginia Tech scientists.

In total, we used 1,299 Sentinel-1 A/B interferometric wide SAR images from 15 Sentinel-1 frames to measure Earth surface deformation in a line-of-sight (LOS) direction for Indian megacities using multitemporal interferometric SAR analysis (Supplementary Table 2). Based on the availability...

Thermal expansion and melting glaciers endanger some of the world’s largest urban centers…

Thermal expansion and melting glaciers endanger some of the world’s largest urban centers…