00:00Did you know that China's coastal cities are sinking and the sea levels are rising at record
00:05speeds? Well, a team of scientists led by Rutgers University has uncovered the truth.
00:10Sea levels today are climbing faster than at any time in the past 4,000 years.
00:15Their big finding? Well, China's coastal cities are at some of the highest risk in the world.
00:21And this is not just a headline scare, but it is backed by thousands of geological records.
00:26The researchers dug deep. They analyzed ancient coral reefs. They studied mangrove formations.
00:33These natural time capsules hold evidence of how high the seas once reached. With that data,
00:39scientists reconstructed ocean changes going back almost 12,000 years.
00:44So how fast are the waters rising? Well, according to the study published in the journal Nature,
00:49global sea levels have gone up by around 1.5 milliliters each year since 1900.
00:54Now, that may sound small, but it is the fastest average rise in any century-long period over the
01:00last four millennia. It is a big leap for a system that's usually slow to change.
01:05Now, the lead researcher, Yucheng Lin, explains what is exactly behind this speed.
01:11Well, two major forces are at play. Thermal expansion and melting ice.
01:16When the planet heats up, the oceans absorb that heat and water expands.
01:19But that's not all. Melting glaciers and ice sheets, especially in Greenland and Antarctica,
01:25dump huge amounts of water into the oceans. More heat, more water, more risk for everyone
01:31on the coast. So for China, the threat has doubled. Many of its biggest cities, for example,
01:37Shanghai, Xinjiang and Hong Kong sit on soft sinking sediment. Deltas made of waterlogged land
01:44are naturally unstable. But human activity is making it even more worse. Extracting ground
01:51water for daily use speeds up the sinking process. Subsidants, the slow sinking of the earth,
01:55happens from both natural and man-made causes.
01:59Now, in Shanghai, some areas dropped more than one meter in the last century.
02:04That's far faster than the pace of global sea level rise. And every centimeter higher the ocean goes,
02:10the risk of flooding spikes for these vital urban and industrial areas. Why does it matter outside
02:16China? Well, these delta regions aren't just local. They're also a crucial part of the global supply
02:22chain. So whenever the manufacturing hubs face flooding, international commerce also feels the
02:29shock. So these regions are flat and fertile, perfect for development, but highly exposed to any
02:35change in water levels. So what is being done about this big problem? Well, the news is not all grim.
02:42Cities like Shanghai have slowed the subsidence by controlling groundwater extraction. They are
02:48re-injecting fresh water and stepping up regulations. Scientists have mapped the most vulnerable zones,
02:55giving city planners the tools they need to protect people and businesses. So this study reaches far
03:02beyond China. Other major cities like New York, Jakarta, Manila, all are built on similar low-lying
03:08land. They face the same threats. Experts remind us that while deltas are great for farming, fishing and
03:15building cities, they're also especially prone to sinking when human demand outpaces nature's balance.
03:22One more thing is that the Rutgers-led team used a smart technology too. Their software helps model
03:28environmental changes across millennia. That's vital for seeing the bigger picture. The study got support
03:34from the National Science Foundation and NASA, giving it global credibility. So the bottom line is this.
03:40Science tells us that China's coastal cities and many others worldwide must adapt fast. Sea level
03:47rises no longer a distant future threat. It's happening now, and for many, it's a matter of survival.
03:58science tells us that China is not. It's happening now, and with this country has been decided to
04:00make sure the scientists are not going to take a chance to try to survive. It's going to be too hard to
04:02make sure they are going to be more faster than the global landscape that we need to use for the
04:03weather, but we can see it at the time. There is no reason why we're going to get at the
04:05global warming, which is going to be more of a high-to-government system that they need to keep
04:07anything. We are coming to the center of the level of the planet. It's going to be a
04:16technical challenge. We help ourORE-level system. The exact reason why we do this is, so the
04:20is that we are going to follow up again, and the Gazea, we are going to be more of the
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