NUKU’ALOFA, Tonga (AP) — Highlighting accelerating sea rises, especially in the much more vulnerable Pacific Island states, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres issued another climate SOS to the world. This time, he said, the initials stand for “save our seas.”
The United Nations and the World Meteorological Organization released reports Monday on the increasing sea level rise, fueled by a warming planet and melting ice caps and glaciers. They highlight how the southwestern Pacific Ocean is being hit not only by rising oceans, but also by other climate change effects from ocean acidification and marine heat waves.
Guterres toured Samoa and Tonga and made his climate case from Tonga’s capital on Tuesday at a meeting of the Pacific Islands Forum, whose member states are among the countries most at risk from climate change. Next month, the United Nations General Assembly will hold a special session to discuss rising sea levels.
“This is an insane situation,” Guterres said. “Rising sea levels are a crisis entirely of human origin. A crisis that will soon swell to an almost unimaginable scale, with no lifeboat to bring us back to safety.”
“A global catastrophe is endangering this Pacific paradise,” he said. “The ocean is overflowing.”
A report commissioned by Guterres’ office found that sea levels lapping against Tonga’s capital, Nuku’alofa, rose 21 centimetres (8.3 inches) between 1990 and 2020, twice the global average of 10 centimetres (3.9 inches). Apia, Samoa, has seen 31 centimetres (1 foot) of rising sea levels, while Suva-B, Fiji has had 29 centimetres (11.4 inches).
“This puts Pacific island nations at grave risk,” Guterres said. About 90% of the region’s people live within 5 kilometers (3 miles) of rising oceans, he said.
Since 1980, coastal flooding has increased from twice a year to 22 times a year on Guam. It has gone from five times a year to 43 times a year on the Cook Islands. In Pago Pago, American Samoa, coastal flooding has dropped from zero to 102 times a year, according to the WMO State of the Climate in the South-West Pacific 2023 report.
“Sea level rise is turning the ocean from a lifelong friend into a growing threat,” Celeste Saulo, secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization, told reporters in Nuku’alofa on Tuesday.
While sea levels on the western margins of the Pacific Ocean are about twice the global average, sea levels in the central Pacific Ocean are closer to the global average, the WMO said.
Sea levels are rising faster in the western tropical Pacific Ocean because of the direction of melting ice from West Antarctica, warmer waters and warmer ocean currents, UN officials say.
Guterres says he has seen changes since the last time he was in the region in May 2019.
While he met with Pacific nations at their annual environmental summit in Nuku’alofa on Tuesday, a few blocks away, hundreds of high school students and activists from the region marched for climate justice.
One of the protesters was Itinterunga Rae of the Barnaban Human Rights Defenders Network, whose people were forced to move from their homeland on the island of Kiribati to Fiji generations ago because of environmental degradation. Rae said abandoning Pacific islands should not be seen as a solution to rising sea levels.
“We promote climate mobility as a solution to be safe from your island that is devastated by climate change, but it is not the safest option,” he said. Barnabans are cut off from the source of their culture and heritage, he said.
“The alarm is valid,” said S. Jeffress Williams, a retired sea-level scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey. He said it’s especially bad for the Pacific Islands because most of the islands are low-lying, making people more likely to get hurt. Three outside experts said the sea-level reports accurately reflect what’s happening.
The Pacific Ocean is being hit hard, despite producing only 0.2 percent of the heat-trapping gases that are driving climate change and expanding oceans, according to the UN. Most of the sea level rise comes from melting ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland. Melting land glaciers contribute to that, and warmer water also expands based on the laws of physics.
The melting of Antarctica and Greenland has accelerated dramatically over the past three to four decades due to high polar warming, Williams, who was not involved in the reports, said in an email.
According to the UN, about 90% of the heat trapped by greenhouse gases ends up in the oceans.
Globally, sea level rise has accelerated, the UN report said, echoing peer-reviewed studies. The pace is now the fastest in 3,000 years, Guterres said.
Between 1901 and 1971, the global average sea level rise was 1.3 centimeters (0.5 inches) per decade, according to the UN report. Between 1971 and 2006, it jumped to 1.9 centimeters (0.75 inches) per decade, then between 2006 and 2018 it was 3.7 centimeters (1.4 inches) per decade. Over the past decade, sea levels have risen by 4.8 centimeters (1.9 inches).
The UN report also highlighted cities in the richest 20 countries, which are responsible for 80% of heat-trapping gases, where rising seas are lapping against major population centers. Cities where sea level rise over the past 30 years has been at least 50% higher than the global average include Shanghai; Perth, Australia; London; Atlantic City, New Jersey; Boston; Miami; and New Orleans.
New Orleans topped the list with 10.2 inches (26 centimeters) of sea level rise between 1990 and 2020. U.N. officials noted that flooding in New York City during Superstorm Sandy in 2012 was worsened by rising sea levels. A 2021 study said climate-driven sea level rise added $8 billion to the storm’s costs.
Guterres has stepped up his rhetoric about what he calls “climate chaos,” urging richer countries to step up efforts to cut carbon emissions, phase out fossil fuels and help poorer nations. Yet countries’ energy plans show they will produce twice as much fossil fuel in 2030 as would limit warming to internationally agreed levels, a 2023 U.N. report found.
Guterres said he expects Pacific Island states to speak “loud and clear” in the next General Assembly, and because they contribute so little to climate change, “they have the moral authority to call on those accelerating sea level rise to reverse these trends.”
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Borenstein reported from Kensington, Maryland.
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