As waters rise along the Egyptian coast, hundreds of buildings in the historic port city of Alexandria have collapsed.
“For centuries, Alexandria’s structures stood as marvels of resilient engineering, enduring earthquakes, storm surges, tsunamis, and more,” said Sara Fouad, of the Technical University of Munich. “But now, rising seas and intensifying storms — fueled by climate change — are undoing in decades what took millennia of human ingenuity to create.”
Fouad is the lead author of a new study investigating why, over the past two decades, the number of buildings collapsing each year in Alexandria has risen tenfold. For the research, scientists compared present-day satellite imagery with decades-old maps to track the retreat of Alexandria’s shoreline, inferring where rising seas had intruded into groundwater. Researchers also mapped which buildings had collapsed and studied soils for evidence of intrusion.
Their research, published in Earth’s Future, showed that buildings are collapsing from the bottom up as a rising water table weakens soil and erodes foundations. Authors called for building sand dunes and planting trees along the coast to block encroaching seawater, noting that more than 7,000 buildings are at risk.
Since 2001, Alexandria has seen 290 buildings collapse. “The true cost of this loss extends far beyond bricks and mortar. We are witnessing the gradual disappearance of historic coastal cities, with Alexandria sounding the alarm,” said study coauthor Essam Heggy, of the University of Southern California. “What once seemed like distant climate risks are now a present reality.”
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