Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Venice continnues to sink into a hole in the ground

It is a modern day Sodom and Gomorrah. It is going to hell. Albeit slowly.

"Venice appears to be continuing to subside, at a rate of about 2 millimeters (.07 inches) a year," said Yehuda Bock, a research geodesist with Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, and the lead author of the new research paper on the city's downward drift. "It's a small effect, but it's important," he added. Given that sea level is rising in the Venetian lagoon, also at 2 millimeters per year, the slight subsidence doubles the rate at which the heights of surrounding waters are increasing relative to the elevation of the city, he noted. In the next 20 years, if Venice and its immediate surroundings subsided steadily at the current rate, researchers would expect the land to sink up to 80 millimeters (3.2 inches) in that period of time, relative to the sea.

Three inches in 20 years. Imagine where the citry will be in ten thousand years.


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