NASA's NISAR Satellite Measures Mexico City Subsidence at Up to a Few Centimeters Per Month

NASA shared a satellite image on Wednesday from the NISAR satellite, capturing parts of Mexico City sinking by more than half an inch every month. Data from NASA's NISAR satellite, collected between October 2025 and January 2026, indicates subsidence rates of up to a few centimeters per month in parts of Mexico City, a process ongoing for over a century.

@ABC reported that this uneven sinking has led to fracturing roads, buildings, and water lines across the area.

-India project launched by NASA and the Indian Space Research Organisation on July 30, 2025, from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, is the first to carry two radar systems at different wavelengths. It records near real-time ground movement changes from space every 12 days.

Mexico City, home to more than 20 million people, has been sinking for over a century, built on ground sinking above an ancient reservoir and a drained lake bed.

Scientists attribute the sinking to decades of draining the ancient lakebed aquifer, where water pumped out causes the ground above to compact and stay that way. Over the past century, parts of Mexico City have subsided by up to 30 feet overall, with some areas reaching 127 feet, due to aquifer compaction.

Many buildings in the city are noticeably tilted due to sinking unevenly into the soft earth over decades or centuries.

In a June 15, 2016, file photo, people walked past a slightly tilted historic building in downtown Mexico City. Dora Carreón-Freyre, a researcher who has studied Mexico City's sinking for more than 25 years, observed damage in the Iztapalapa region. Carreón-Freyre also noted that in 2017, a taxi fell inside a fracture in Mexico City.

Previously, scientists studying Mexico City's land subsidence relied on ground and space satellites that collected annual data, as researchers did not have the ability to continuously track the movement from space until now. Carreón-Freyre stated: 'To have these tools and to realize the distribution of these differential rates –it's amazing.

Things that we only learned by walking everywhere when we were young, it's different now.

According to a 1995 report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Mexico City was sinking roughly two inches per year by the late 1800s. The report found that by the 1950s, the sinking rate jumped to 18 inches per year. Engineer Roberto Gayol reported the first finding on Mexico City's sinking in 1925, pointing to a large canal and tunnel built to drain water out of the city's waterlogged ground as a potential cause.

@ABC reported that the compaction process is akin to wet clay that gets squeezed flat and hardens in place, based on a study published by the American Geophysical Union. Carreón-Freyre highlighted similar issues elsewhere, stating: 'And what I saw in the Philippines is really terrible because they have two phenomena working together that is very bad for the population: subsidence and sea level rise.