Sea-level rise from land subsidence in major coastal cities

Cheryl Tay; Eric O. Lindsey; Shi Tong Chin; Jamie W. McCaughey; David Bekaert; Michele Nguyen; Hook Hua; Gerald Manipon; Mohammed Karim; Benjamin P. Horton; Tanghua Li; Emma M. Hill

doi:10.1038/s41893-022-00947-z

Sea-level rise from land subsidence in major coastal cities

Cheryl Tay^*
, Eric O. Lindsey
, Shi Tong Chin
, Jamie W. McCaughey
, David Bekaert
, Michele Nguyen
, Hook Hua
, Gerald Manipon
, Mohammed Karim
, Benjamin P. Horton
, Tanghua Li
, Emma M. Hill

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Journal Publications and Reviews › RGC 21 - Publication in refereed journal › peer-review

142 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Coastal land can be lost at rapid rates due to relative sea-level rise (RSLR) resulting from local land subsidence. However, the comparative severity of local land subsidence is unknown due to high spatial variabilities and difficulties reconciling observations across localities. Here we provide self-consistent, high spatial resolution relative local land subsidence (RLLS) velocities derived from Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar for the 48 largest coastal cities, which represent 20% of the global urban population. We show that cities experiencing the fastest RLLS are concentrated in Asia. RLLS is also more variable across the 48 cities (−16.2 to 1.1 mm per year) than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimations of vertical land motion (−5.2 to 4.9 mm per year). With our standardized method, the identification of relative vulnerabilities to RLLS and comparisons of RSLR effects accounting for RLLS are now possible across cities worldwide. These will better inform sustainable urban planning and future adaptation strategies in coastal cities. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	1049-1057
Journal	Nature Sustainability
Volume	5
Issue number	12
Online published	12 Sept 2022
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-022-00947-z
Publication status	Published - Dec 2022
Externally published	Yes

Funding

We thank the European Union Copernicus and European Space Agency for acquiring Sentinel-1 data, and Amazon Web Services for their provision of the Public Dataset Program to enable the download of Sentinel-1 data in the Asia region (https://registry.opendata.aws/sentinel1-slc-seasia-pds/ ). This research is supported by the Earth Observatory of Singapore (EOS), the National Research Foundation (NRF), Singapore, and the Ministry of Education (MOE), Singapore, under the Research Centres of Excellence initiative, by a Singapore NRF Investigatorship (Award ID NRF-NRFI05-2019-0009) and a Singapore MOE Tier 3 grant (Award ID MOE2019-T3-1-004) awarded to E.M.H. This research is also supported by the NRF, Singapore, and National Environment Agency, Singapore, under the National Sea Level Programme Initiative as part of the Urban Solutions & Sustainability – Integration Fund (Award No. USS-IF-2020-5) by a grant (Award ID NSLP-2021-3R-05) awarded to E.M.H. The research was carried out, in part, at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. T.L. and B.P.H. are supported by the Singapore MOE Academic Research Fund (MOE-T2EP50120-0007). This work comprises EOS contribution number 445.

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

SDG 11 Sustainable Cities and Communities
SDG 13 Climate Action
SDG 14 Life Below Water

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title = "Sea-level rise from land subsidence in major coastal cities",

abstract = "Coastal land can be lost at rapid rates due to relative sea-level rise (RSLR) resulting from local land subsidence. However, the comparative severity of local land subsidence is unknown due to high spatial variabilities and difficulties reconciling observations across localities. Here we provide self-consistent, high spatial resolution relative local land subsidence (RLLS) velocities derived from Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar for the 48 largest coastal cities, which represent 20\% of the global urban population. We show that cities experiencing the fastest RLLS are concentrated in Asia. RLLS is also more variable across the 48 cities (−16.2 to 1.1 mm per year) than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimations of vertical land motion (−5.2 to 4.9 mm per year). With our standardized method, the identification of relative vulnerabilities to RLLS and comparisons of RSLR effects accounting for RLLS are now possible across cities worldwide. These will better inform sustainable urban planning and future adaptation strategies in coastal cities. {\textcopyright} 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.",

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AU - Tay, Cheryl

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AU - Chin, Shi Tong

AU - McCaughey, Jamie W.

AU - Bekaert, David

AU - Nguyen, Michele

AU - Hua, Hook

AU - Manipon, Gerald

AU - Karim, Mohammed

AU - Horton, Benjamin P.

AU - Li, Tanghua

AU - Hill, Emma M.

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N2 - Coastal land can be lost at rapid rates due to relative sea-level rise (RSLR) resulting from local land subsidence. However, the comparative severity of local land subsidence is unknown due to high spatial variabilities and difficulties reconciling observations across localities. Here we provide self-consistent, high spatial resolution relative local land subsidence (RLLS) velocities derived from Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar for the 48 largest coastal cities, which represent 20% of the global urban population. We show that cities experiencing the fastest RLLS are concentrated in Asia. RLLS is also more variable across the 48 cities (−16.2 to 1.1 mm per year) than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimations of vertical land motion (−5.2 to 4.9 mm per year). With our standardized method, the identification of relative vulnerabilities to RLLS and comparisons of RSLR effects accounting for RLLS are now possible across cities worldwide. These will better inform sustainable urban planning and future adaptation strategies in coastal cities. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.

AB - Coastal land can be lost at rapid rates due to relative sea-level rise (RSLR) resulting from local land subsidence. However, the comparative severity of local land subsidence is unknown due to high spatial variabilities and difficulties reconciling observations across localities. Here we provide self-consistent, high spatial resolution relative local land subsidence (RLLS) velocities derived from Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar for the 48 largest coastal cities, which represent 20% of the global urban population. We show that cities experiencing the fastest RLLS are concentrated in Asia. RLLS is also more variable across the 48 cities (−16.2 to 1.1 mm per year) than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimations of vertical land motion (−5.2 to 4.9 mm per year). With our standardized method, the identification of relative vulnerabilities to RLLS and comparisons of RSLR effects accounting for RLLS are now possible across cities worldwide. These will better inform sustainable urban planning and future adaptation strategies in coastal cities. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.

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Sea-level rise from land subsidence in major coastal cities

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