For sixty years, tide gauges there have measured sea level rise at twice the global average rate and faster anywhere else on the East Coast.
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As it turns out, the idea of Washington DC sinking into its surrounding waters has been guessed at by geologists for generations, due to signs that the land beneath Chesapeake Bay has been settling for quite some time now.
“Will Congress just sit there with their feet getting ever wetter?” he asks in the UVM release.
Lead author Ben DeJong, who conducted the research as a doctoral student in Vermont’s Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, explains: “It’s a bit like sitting on one side of a water bed filled with very thick honey … the other side goes up”.
The study concludes that, indeed, the land under the Chesapeake Bay is sinking quickly and the researchers project that Washington, D.C. could drop by six or more inches in the next century.
A sinking capital could be problematic enough, but climate change adds to the concerns. The land in the Chesapeake Bay region, they said, was pushed upward during the ice age due to the weight of the North American ice sheet pressing on the land further north. After the ice sheet melted, the land began to sink back down. It was published this week in GSA Today, the magazine of the Geological Society of America.
Washington was founded July 16, 1790, near the confluence of the Potomac and Anacostia rivers. They attempted to study layers of sediment in these deep holes, using a suite of techniques to calculate the age of the sand, other rocks and organic matter in every layer.
A symbol of enormous national historical significance, not to mention one of the most tourist-driven economies in the US, officials are already looking for ways in which to prevent rising sea levels from destroying the city’s landmarks and infrastructure.
Taken together, UVM said, the data convinced the scientists their model is “bullet-proof”. Another recent study by a team including ex-NASA climate scientists James Hansen, argues that the rise in sea level could be as much as 10 feet by 2050 or so.
Participating in the study were scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey, the University of Vermont, Utah State University, Berkeley Geochronology Center in California and Imperial College in London. “Six extra inches of water really matters in this part of the world”.
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The data shows no indications of the rising sea levels having been caused by human means.
