Mexico City Is Sinking so Fast It's Now Visible From Space
NISAR radar found some districts sinking up to 0.8 inches a month, as groundwater loss strains roads, buildings and the city’s main airport.
- New imagery from the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar satellite mission reveals Mexico City is sinking at an accelerated pace, with some areas dropping up to 0.8 inches per month between October 2025 and January 2026.
- Groundwater over-extraction from an ancient aquifer beneath the city is the primary cause, as the reservoir supplies around 60% of Mexico City's drinking water; decades of extraction from the soft soil of Lake Texcoco have left large voids beneath the surface.
- Critical infrastructure, including the Benito Juarez International Airport and the Metro, faces structural strain from uneven sinking known as 'differential subsidence,' affecting more than 22 million residents across the metropolis.
- Officials warn that aquifer depletion worsens land instability, creating a feedback loop threatening a potential 'Day Zero' water crisis; the Angel of Independence monument required 14 additional steps to compensate for sinking ground.
- Craig Ferguson, deputy director of the NISAR project, said, 'Images like this confirm that the NISAR measurements are in line with expectations,' as researchers believe the technology will transform global monitoring of geological processes.
23 Articles
23 Articles
Buildings are tilting, roads are deforming, water and sewerage networks are tearing: Intensive groundwater collection in the valley of Mexico accelerates the sinking.
mannheim24.de
op-online.deA 20 million metropolis is sinking. A space radar now provides data that makes the scale of the disaster fully visible.
Mexico City is sinking so fast it's now visible from space
Mexico City's long-running sinking crisis is becoming harder to ignore — and now, scientists are tracking it from space. New satellite imagery from NASA revealed that parts of the megacity are sinking by nearly 10 inches per year, underscoring the urgency of a problem decades in the making. As the Associated Press reported, Mexico City, home to roughly 22 million people, was built on an ancient lake bed. More than a century of groundwater pumpin…
Mexico City faces an accelerated sinking of the soil that already threatens its critical infrastructure and water supply for more than 22 million inhabitants, according to recent scientific studies.
The city, one of the largest in the world, lies on the site of a former high-mountain lake and an ancient aquifer. This aquifer provides approximately 60 percent of the drinking water for the metropolitan area's 22 million residents. For decades, however, groundwater has been pumped so intensively that the ground has begun to subside. Overexploitation has also deepened the water crisis – Mexico City is facing the risk of a so-called "day zero"—a…
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