NASA Map Reveals Major Cities in California That'll Be Entirely Underwater in the Next 25 Years

The United States is at risk of losing major cities in the bustling state of California due to rising sea levels. The most populous state in the country, California's coastline faces the threat of sinking underwater within 25 years. The world has endured the most bizarre weather conditions of late, from the devastating Los Angeles wildfires to rapidly melting ice sheets in the polar regions. At the heart of the problem is climate change. A new study conducted by NASA found that while soaring sea levels are one point of concern, there is something more at play that has triggered alarm bells about the future of California. 

The U.S. state houses 39 million residents and this number is projected to increase by the next decade, according to a 2024 estimate by the Public Policy Institute of California. However, the safety of this vast population is in jeopardy as they could potentially lose their homes and get displaced as the ground beneath them sinks slowly within the next 25 years. By 2050, the coastal cities, specifically, Los Angeles and San Francisco, will be affected by the rapidly surging sea levels, twice as much as previously estimated, as per the results published in the journal Science Advances. San Rafael, Corte Madera, Foster City, and Bay Farm Island are more likely to be submerged sooner than later. 

This is because of the landslides slowly moving beneath the ground, forcing the land to sink in the Big Sur mountains below San Francisco at a pace greater than the rising sea levels. The natural event also occurs in the Palos Verdes Peninsula in Los Angeles. Remote sensing scientist Marin Govorcin, lead author of the study, working with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, said in a statement, “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.” As a result, sea levels will rise more than a foot with the land simultaneously sinking in LA, whereas the San Francisco Bay Area will experience a sea level rise of up to 17 inches.

Overall, a rise of 6 to 14.5 inches higher than levels estimated for the year 2000 will drown the coastlines of the Golden State. These predictions are made using complex scientific calculations and satellite imagery that helped track how thousands of miles of the coastline might be sinking. The study basically analyzed vertical land motion to deduce its unpredictable nature, in scale and speed, caused by human-induced factors like groundwater pumping, and natural events like tectonic movements. Tide gauge measurements also facilitate current models but come with certain limitations like location restrictions and inefficiency in tracking the dynamic land motion. 

However, not all coastal locations in California face the threat of going underwater. The Santa Barbara groundwater basin has steadily replenished itself with an uplift of several millimeters per year since 2018. Similarly, Long Beach, a hotspot for fluid extraction and injection due to oil and gas production, also observed an uplift. The research study was a collaboration between NASA’s JPL, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the European Space Agency (ESA) to extract as much information about the dangers of a sinking Californian state. However, the US state is not alone in this omen, as several global coastal cities like Venice, Mumbai, New York City, and Amsterdam are at risk of land subsidence, per Treehugger.