Miami is sinking.
According to a new study, released in the journal Earth and Space Science, luxury beachfront condos and hotels in the Florida city are sinking into the ground at “unexpected” rates, the Miami Herald reports.
Approximately 70 percent of the buildings in the city’s north and central Sunny Isles are affected, according to the University of Miami, which produced the report.
Researchers who published the study identified 35 buildings that have reportedly sunk by up to three inches between 2016 and 2023.
Some iconic Miami landmarks are on the list of 35 affected buildings; the Faena Hotel, the Porche Design Tower, the Surf Club Towers, Trump Tower II, Trump International Beach Resorts, and the Ritz-Carlton Residences. are all among the sinking structures.
The study’s senior author, University of Miami’s Falk Amelung, told the Miami Herald that virtually all of the buildings constructed along the coast of Miami’s outer barrier islands are sinking.
The impetus for the study was actually a response to the tragic 2021 collapse of the Champlain Towers in Surfside, which killed 98 people and lit a fire for stronger structural reviews for apartments and condos across the state.
The researchers used satellite data that could measure minor changes in ground sinkage — subsidence — over time and found that subsidence was not the cause of the Champlain Towers collapse. While they found no evidence of subsidence there, they did fight plenty of evidence all along Miami’s coastline.
Amelung told the Miami Herald that they found evidence of subsidence between 0.8 inches and just over three inches, primarily in Sunny Isles Beach, Surfside, and at two buildings in Miami Beach — the Faena Hotel and L’Atelier condo. They found another instance in Bal Harbour.
What does that mean for the coastline and those who live and vacation on it? No one is sure, not just yet. More research will be needed to determine what exactly this discovery will mean for the region.
Newly built buildings typically will sink a number of inches in the first several years after they’re built as they settle into the ground. Just because a building sinks a bit doesn’t mean it is losing structural integrity. Paul Chinowsky, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder, told the Miami Herald that so long as the sinking was even and did not throw the building askew, the structure would generally maintain its integrity.
Right now, it’s unclear if the sinking buildings identified by the study are sinking evenly or are sinking in a way that could cause structural damage.
That will be the next step for researchers — to determine if the buildings are sinking in a way that threatens to damage their structures, and potentially put individuals inside and around them at risk.
Until more research is done, it won’t be clear what exactly is causing the subsidence, but climate change cannot be ruled out as a contributing force.
Sea level rise — driven by human burning of fossil fuels heating the globe and changing the climate — has been eroding the US coastline, including the underlying sand and limestone that supports the pillars that provide the structural support for highrise condos.
Stronger waves and heavier rainfall — both results of the changing climate — can also contribute to the erosion of the coastline.
On top of threatening the structures themselves, issues like subsidence may also contribute to driving up home insurance costs. Americans have spent the last two decades moving to and building on disaster-prone land, whether that be in Florida, in wildfire-ripe locations in the west, or in hailstorm-heavy stretches of land in central Texas.
This proclivity to live and build where structures are constantly battered by the severe weather has forced home insurance rates through the roof.
