New Delhi, May 27 -- Land in South Africa has been rising at the rate of 2 millimetres per year, according to a recent report. Between 2012 and 2020, the land rose by about 6mm, showed data published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth in March 2025.

The general understanding that the rise is due to hot magma rising from the Earth's mantle at the Quathlamba hotspot (a geological feature located in South Africa) or a seismic activity, may not be the driving force this time, the authors of the report indicated.

Instead, loss of water during droughts may have caused the earth's surface to bounce up as an elastic response when excess water (groundwater, soil moisture, surface water) was removed. The mass of water pressing d...