Jakarta is increasingly threatened by flooding

Jakarta is increasingly threatened by flooding Today’s Image of the Day from NASA Earth Observatory features Jakarta on the Indonesian island of Java – a city that is increasingly threatened by sea level rise.

The Jakarta metropolitan area is the most densely populated region of Indonesia, with a population of 32 million people.

Flooding has always been an issue in Jakarta because the city is situated along low-lying rivers that swell during monsoon season. North America is a continent entirely within the Northern Hemisphere and almost all within the Western Hemisphere. It can also be described as the northern subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Caribbean Sea, and to the west and south by the Pacific Ocean. Because it is on the North American Tectonic Plate, Greenland is included as part of North America geographically. North America covers an area of about 24,709,000 square kilometers (9,540,000 square miles), about 16.5% of the Earth’s land area and about 4.8% of its total surface. North America is the third-largest continent by area, following Asia and Africa, and the fourth by population after Asia, Africa, and Europe.

However, the flooding issue has gotten much worse in recent decades. One of the biggest contributors is the widespread pumping of groundwater that has caused rapid rates of land subsidence. According to some estimates, as much as 40 percent of Jakarta now sits below sea level.

Over the last three decades, there has been a major flood every few years in Jakarta. In 2007, extreme floods during the monsoon season submerged more than 70 percent of the city.

Image Credit: NASA Earth Observatory 

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By Chrissy Sexton, Earth.com Staff Writer