New York City is sinking under the weight of its skyscrapers, new research shows, which could put its population of more than 8 million people at an increased risk of coastal flooding. [...]

Researchers estimated the weight of all of New York City’s buildings to be around 842 million tons. But to find the areas more vulnerable to sinking — or, as they call it in more scientific terms, “subsidence” — a key factor to consider was the type of soil beneath the buildings. — The Verge

As the world heats up and sea levels rise, communities in the U.S. could spend more than $400 billion on seawalls to try to hold the ocean back over the next couple of decades. But there’s a catch: Building a seawall in one area can often mean that flooding gets even worse in another neighborhood or city nearby. — Fast Company

Realtor.com has become the first site to disclose information about a home's flood risk and how climate change could increase that risk in the coming decades, potentially signaling a major shift in consumers' access to information about climate threats. [...]

Still, other websites such as Redfin, Zillow and Trulia have no plans to share information about flooding with users [...] say home sellers are reluctant to publish flood risk information, since it could decrease their home's value. — NPR

June marks the start of hurricane season on the Atlantic Ocean. Even amidst the ravages of a novel coronavirus and state violence, the perils posed by a heating planet are not going away. If the city turned out to be woefully underprepared for a pandemic, what about measures to protect against storms and floods? — Urban Omnibus

The US has become terrible at building big things, and negligent in even maintaining our existing infrastructure. [...]

That all bodes terribly for our ability to grapple with the coming dangers of climate change, because it is fundamentally an infrastructure problem. — MIT Technology Review

More than 11 billion tons of ice was lost to the oceans by surface melt on Wednesday alone, creating a net mass ice loss of some 217 billion tons from Greenland in July.

The scope of Wednesday’s ice melt is a number difficult to grasp. To understand just how much ice is being lost, a mere 1 billion tons—or 1 gigaton—of ice loss is equivalent to about 400,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools, the Danish Meteorological Institute said. — The Associated Press

Venice is full of water, Venice floods, the climate is visibly changing, and sea levels are rising, so you would expect Venice, of all places, to have an official strategy for what to do about it—but you would be wrong. The management plans produced by the City of Venice for Unesco in 2013 and 2018 barely mention the subject and twice, in 2016 and 2019, Unesco’s World Heritage Committee has failed to call them out on this astonishing failing. — The Art Newspaper

While other regions grappled with destructive waves and rising seas, the West Coast for decades was spared by a rare confluence of favorable winds and cooler water. This “sea level rise suppression,” as scientists call it, went largely undetected. [...]

But lines in the sand are meant to shift. In the last 100 years, the sea rose less than 9 inches in California. By the end of this century, the surge could be greater than 9 feet. — Los Angeles Times

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio proposed a $10 billion plan to push out the lower Manhattan coastline as much as 500 feet, or two city blocks, to protect from flooding that’s expected to become more frequent as global temperatures rise. [...]

Portions of the extended land would be at 20 feet above sea level. The city can’t build flood protection on the existing land because it’s too crowded with utilities, sewers and subway lines, he said. — Bloomberg

In Florida, you will see a bewildering mix of optimism, opportunism and denial in the real estate market: luxury condominiums going up in flood-prone South Beach, and property values rising in the vulnerable Keys, post-Hurricane Irma. And though the House of Representatives passed a bill to require real estate agents to disclose flood risks, the Senate has not reviewed it, and a culture of “systemic, fraudulent nondisclosure” persists in high flood risk areas. — The Guardian

In the language of climate change, “adaptation” refers to ways to blunt the immediate effects of extreme weather, such as building seawalls, conserving drinking water, updating building codes, and helping more people get disaster insurance. [...]

But some researchers are going further, calling for what some call the “deep adaptation agenda.” — Bloomberg

Sea level rise and increased rain have posed serious flood risks for Bangkok, the capital city of Thailand, which is already close to sea level. [...]

She works to do this by reclaiming urban porosity through a network of public green spaces. [...]

She has already been planning and working on projects beyond climate resilient housing - including rain gardens, green roofs, permeable parking, urban forests and farms - to address the root causes of increased flooding in her city. — Forbes