A historic American city could soon vanish as a growing number of studies have found that it’s sinking at an alarming rate.
New Orleans, home to more than 360,000 people, and the surrounding areas are now sinking by up to two inches every year – with projections warning that much of the region could be underwater by 2050.
A 2024 study including a researcher from New Orleans’ Tulane University discovered that a large portion of the city sits on soft, squishy soils (peat and clay) that sink when drained or built on.
However, much of this soil has either rotted after being exposed to air or has been compacted under the weight of local buildings and roads.
New Orleans joins a growing list of coastal cities throughout the US that scientists warn are in danger of being washed away by flooding and rising sea levels.
Overall, two dozen cities are at higher risk of sinking over the next three decades.
A team of researchers led by Virginia Tech identified over 24 locations that are battling a combination of sinking land and rising sea levels, putting one out of every 50 residents at risk of needing to relocate.
Those living along the Gulf Coast and the Atlantic seaboard were deemed in the ‘danger zone,’ while residents along the Pacific Coast faced less flood risk and ‘relatively modest, rock coast cliff retreat’ – but are still not out harm’s way.
Over 500,000 US citizens across 32 major cities are expected to be displaced by the flooding, due to home property damages that could cost up to $109 billion by 2050. Scientists warned that nearly one foot of rising sea-levels is likely to compound the risk of ‘destructive flooding’
New Orleans sits along the Mississippi River and is home to more than 360,000 people on the Gulf Coast
It’s a grave problem for an area that has already been devastated by flooding from hurricanes over the last two decades.
Unfortunately, it turns out that Louisiana’s efforts to prevent flooding during major Gulf Coast storms is also speeding up the pace of New Orleans’ descent into the sea.
Several other studies have found that building new protective boundaries to prevent hurricane-related floods has actually blocked the area’s ability to build up new sediment that keeps New Orleans from sinking.
According to a team from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and Louisiana State University’s Center for GeoInformatics, the highest rates of subsidence (sinking of the ground) was found along New Orleans’ industrial areas along the Mississippi River.
Several other areas are also becoming more unstable, including the city’s Upper and Lower 9th Ward, which experienced catastrophic flooding during Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Since Katrina, the state has worked on building new levees throughout New Orleans – erecting several tall, sturdy walls which keep water from spilling over and flooding the city’s low-lying areas.
The Virginia Tech study highlight many more iconic cities at risk of flooding, with Miami facing some of the highest risks
In 2023, a team from NASA’s JPL, Johns Hopkins University, and the University of Maryland argued that climate change was the major driving factor behind New Orleans’ ongoing flooding problems.
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Compared to measurements in 1993, the study in Water Resources Research found that climate change-induced rainfall, river flow, and flooding was affecting an additional 114 square miles along the Mississippi River in 2020.
That impacted between 10,000 and 27,000 more residents in the New Orleans area.
While sea levels rise and the building of flood control structures like levees were also mentioned in the study, the scientists put most of the blame on climate-induced changes in rain and river patterns caused by global warming.
The Virginia Tech study highlight many other iconic cities at risk of sinking, with Miami facing some of the highest threats.
The research team, led by geochemists at Virginia Tech, calculated the Atlantic’s roughly 370 square-miles of at-risk urban landscape (in red above), as well as the at-risk Gulf and Pacific coast regions, using satellite imagery and laser-measured LiDAR
Along the Gulf coast, cities like New Orleans in Louisiana, Galveston in Texas and nine more metropoles face potentially devastating risks as well. The study estimated 319 square-miles of crowded Gulf cityscapes (marked in red above for the 2050 estimates) may be at risk
South Florida’s sun-drenched party city could lose as much as 81,000 homes, coming to a total cost up to $31 billion dollars and risking the lives or wellbeing of as many as 122,000 Miami-area residents: all figures the study called ‘conservative.’
The study identified more than 500,000 people in 32 major cities, home to that are expected to be displaced by the flooding, due to home property damages that could cost up to $109 billion by 2050.
‘One of the challenges we have with communicating the issue of sea-level rise and land subsidence [i.e. land sinking] broadly is it often seems like a long-term problem,’ said the study’s lead author, Virginia Tech geochemist Leonard Ohenhen.
‘Something whose impacts will only manifest at the end of the century, which many people may not care about.’
‘What we’ve done here is focused the picture on the short term,’ Ohenhen noted, ‘just 26 years from now.’
The Virginia Tech study estimates that up to 225,000 people risk of death, displacement or economic hardship near the Gulf (pictured) as up to 109,000 homes face rising ocean waters, and thus closer proximity to chaotic weather, like increasing hurricanes, from rising world temperatures
Along the Gulf coast, cities like New Orleans in Louisiana, Galveston in Texas and nine more metropoles face potentially devastating risks as well.
Up to 225,000 people at risk of death, displacement or economic hardship as up to 109,000 homes face rising ocean waters, and thus closer proximity to chaotic weather patterns, like increasing hurricanes, produced by rising world temperatures.
The study estimated 319 square-miles of crowded Gulf cityscapes may be at risk.
Ironically, despite the west coast’s vaunted reputation for environmental awareness and legislation, the ten US Pacific coast cities examined by the new study faced significantly less risks than their Atlantic and Gulf counterparts.
By 2050, no more than 16 square-miles of Pacific urban homestead faced a serious risk from rising seas and the exacerbating role of heavyweight skyscraper sinking.
Somewhere under 30,000 people and 15,000 home properties are at risk, totally no more than $22 billion in the researchers’ conservative worst case scenario.
Across every city in their study, Ohenhen of Virginia Tech noted that the team found economic and ethnic minorities were in the parts of town most at risk from the relative sea level rise.
‘That was the most surprising part of the study,’ Ohenhen said in a statement.
Pacific coast residents faced less flood risk but did face a unique risk of ‘relatively modest, rock coast cliff retreat,’ the new study found. Above, an aerial view of mansions still standing after a powerful storm brought flooding and mudslides to Dana Point, California this February
‘We found that there is racial and economic inequality in those areas in that there was an overrepresentation of historically marginalized groups potentially impacted as well as properties with significantly lower value than the rest of the cities.’
The combination of the sea-level dangers and these residents lack of economic resources to cope ‘really multiplies the potential impact to those areas and their abilities to recover from significant flooding,’ Ohenhen said.
Perhaps most alarmingly, the speed at which sea level is now rising, according to the new study, and other recent investigations, continues to climb faster.
Over the past 100 years, the average or so-called global mean rate of sea level rise hovered up to around 0.07 inches (1.7 millimeters) per year.
But by the early years of the 21st Century, that rate shot up to 0.12 inches (3.1 mm) per year and is still accelerating.
Today the global mean rate of sea level rise is 0.15 inches (3.7 mm) per year.
‘Even if climate change mitigation efforts succeed in stabilizing temperature in the future decades,’ the researchers warn in their new report, ‘sea levels will continue to rise as a result of the continuing response of oceans to past warming.’
In other words, a significant amount of their risk estimates for 2050 may be unavoidable.