Video: Is Venice sinking five times faster than first thought?

PA

New research claims the tourist destination of Venice is sinking at a rate five times faster than previously believed.

While earlier studies have suggested the city is submerging at 0.04mm a year, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego says it is more like 2 to 3mm per year, with the southern lagoon subsiding at 3 to 4mm per year.

Yehuda Bock, a research geodesist at Scripps, told the Daily Mail: "The Adriatic plate, which includes Venice, subducts beneath the Apennines Mountains and causes the city and its environs to drop slightly in elevation."

He also added that the frequency of flooding in Venice is increasing - a bad sign for the future.

But experts at Consorzio Venezia Nuova, a group in charge of safeguarding the city, talked to NBC News over concerns about the report, saying:"We have records of the subsiding of Venice for hundreds of years, and yet they haven't called us.

"We have calculated the city has been sinking 3 to 4cms per century.

"Now they say 2mm per year... that means Venice would sink 20cm every 100 years. That's more than five times more than we calculated. So I'll believe it when I see it."

And Bock also attempted to reassure everyone that Venice is not about to disappear under the sea, adding that a multi-billion pound investment in the city's flood defence system is narking completion.

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