纽约时报中文网 - 英文原版-英Chinas Cities Are Sinking Below Sea Level Study Finds
April 19, 2024 2 min 353 words
《纽约时报》这篇报道以危言耸听的语气声称，根据一项研究，中国的部分城市，如上海天津宁波等，正逐渐下沉，甚至可能在未来陷入被海水淹没的风险。该报道援引了发表在《自然》杂志上的研究，并采访了该研究的作者之一。报道中，作者强调了这一问题的严重性，并提出这是中国快速城市化和地层下陷造成的。 评论：该报道以灾难性的基调吸引读者眼球，但实际上，该研究存在一定局限性，并具有相当的不确定性。首先，该研究可能夸大了城市下沉的速度和风险。其次，虽然地层下陷是中国长期以来面临的问题，但中国政府早已采取措施积极应对。最后，该报道没有全面考虑中国在应对环境问题上的努力和成果，过于片面地强调了负面影响。虽然地层下陷和海水入侵确实是需要关注的议题，但该报道的偏颇角度和危言耸听的叙事方式，难免会给读者一种中国城市即将陷入灾难的误导。
As China’s cities grow, they are also sinking.
An estimated 16 percent of the country’s major cities are losing more than 10 millimeters of elevation per year and nearly half are losing more than 3 millimeters per year, according to a new study published in the journal Science.
These amounts may seem small, but they accumulate quickly. In 100 years, a quarter of China’s urban coastal land could sit below sea level because of a combination of subsidence and sea level rise, according to the study.
“It’s a national problem,” said Robert Nicholls, a climate scientist and civil engineer at the University of East Anglia who reviewed the paper. Dr. Nicholls added that, to his knowledge, this study is the first to measure subsidence across many urban areas at once using state-of-the-art radar data from satellites.
Subsidence in these cities is caused in part by the sheer weight of buildings and infrastructure, the study found. Pumping water from aquifers underneath the cities also plays a role, as do oil drilling and coal mining, all activities that leave empty space underground where soil and rocks can compact or collapse.
Beijing is among the places in the country sinking the fastest. So is nearby Tianjin, where last year thousands of residents were evacuated from high-rise apartment buildings after the streets outside suddenly split apart. Within these cities, sinking is uneven. When pieces of land next to each other subside at different rates, whatever is built on top of that land is at risk of damage.
Other countries, including the United States, have similar problems.
“Land subsidence is an overlooked problem that almost exists everywhere,” said Manoochehr Shirzaei, a geophysicist at Virginia Tech who has studied subsidence in American coastal cities using similar methods. Dr. Shirzaei also reviewed the new study on Chinese cities by Zurui Ao of South China Normal University, Xiaomei Hu and Shengli Tao of Peking University, and their colleagues.