by NUKU’ALOFA, Tonga (AP) – Highlighting seas that are rising at an accelerating rate, especially in the far more vulnerable Pacific island nations, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has issued another climate SOS to the world . This time he said those initials stand for “Save our seas.”
The United Nations and the World Meteorological Organization on Monday released reports on worsening sea level rise, warming turbocharged land and melting ice sheets and glaciers. They highlight how the Southwest Pacific is hurt not only by rising oceans, but by other climate change effects from ocean acidification and marine heat waves.
Guterres toured Samoa and Tonga and made his climate plea from Tonga’s capital on Tuesday at a meeting of the Pacific Islands Forum, whose member states are among the countries most at risk of climate change. Next month the United Nations General Assembly will hold a special session to discuss rising seas.
“This is a crazy situation,” Guterres said. “Rising seas is a man-made crisis. A crisis that will soon escalate on an unimaginable scale, with no lifeboat to bring us back to safety.”
“A global catastrophe is endangering the Pacific Ocean,” he said. “The ocean is overflowing.”
A report commissioned by Guterres’ office found that between 1990 and 2020 sea level was rising by 21 centimeters (8.3 inches) against Tonga’s capital, Nuku’alofa, twice the global average of 10 centimeters (3.9 inches). Apia, Samoa, saw 31 centimeters (1 foot) of rising seas, while Suva-B, Fiji had 29 centimeters (11.4 inches).
“This puts Pacific Island nations at great risk,” Guterres said. About 90% of the region’s people live within 5 kilometers (3 miles) of the rising oceans, he said.
Since 1980, coastal flooding in Guam has increased from twice a year to 22 times a year. It has gone from five times a year to 43 times a year in the Cook Islands. In Pago Pago, American Samoa, coastal flooding went from zero to 102 times a year, according to the WMO State of the Climate in South-West Pacific 2023 report.
“Because of sea level rise, the ocean is changing from a lifelong friend to a growing threat,” Celeste Saulo, secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization, told reporters in Nuku’alofa on Monday. Tuesday.
While the western edges of the Pacific Ocean see sea level rise about twice the global average, the central Pacific Ocean is closer to the global average, the WMO said.
Sea levels are rising faster in the western tropical Pacific because of the melting ice from west Antarctica, warmer waters and ocean currents, United Nations officials said.
Guterres said he can see changes since he was last in the region in May 2019.
While he met in Nuku’alofa on Tuesday with Pacific nations on the environment at the annual summit of their leaders, a hundred local high school students and activists from across the Pacific marched for climate justice a few blocks away.
One of the marchers was Itinterunga Rae from the Barnaban Human Rights Defenders Network, whose family was forced generations ago to relocate to Fiji from their home on the island of Kiribati due to environmental degradation. Rae said the abandonment of Pacific islands should not be seen as a solution to rising seas.
“We promote climate mobility as a solution to being safe from your climate-change-ravaged island, but it’s not the safest option,” he said. Barnabans are cut off from the source of their culture and heritage, he said.
“The alarm is warranted,” said S. Jeffress Williams, a retired US Geological Survey sea-level scientist. He said it is particularly bad for the islands in the Pacific Ocean because most of the islands are at low elevations, so there is more chance of people getting hurt. Three outside experts said the sea level reports accurately reflect what is happening.
The Pacific Ocean has been hit hard despite only 0.2% of heat-trapping gases being produced by climate change and ocean expansion, the United Nations said. The largest chunk of sea level rise is from ice sheets that have melted in Antarctica and Greenland. Melting land glaciers add to that, and warmer water expands based on the laws of physics.
Antarctic and Greenland “Melting has accelerated significantly over the past decades due to a high rate of warming at the poles,” Williams, who was not part of the reports, said in an email.
About 90% of the heat trapped by greenhouse gases goes into the oceans, the United Nations said.
Globally, sea level rise is accelerating, the UN report said, in line with peer-reviewed studies. The rate is now the fastest it has been in 3,000 years, Guterres said.
Between 1901 and 1971, the average global sea level rise was 1.3 centimeters per decade, according to the UN report. Between 1971 and 2006 it jumped to 1.9 centimeters per decade, then between 2006 and 2018 it was up to 3.7 centimeters per decade. Over the past decade, seas have risen 4.8 centimeters (1.9 inches).
The UN report also highlighted cities in the 20 richest nations, which account for 80% of heat-trapping gases, where rising seas are falling in large population centers. Among those cities where sea level has risen in the last 30 years is at least 50% higher than the global average is 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. UN officials highlighted flooding in New York City during Superstorm Sandy in 2012 and rising seas worse. A 2021 study said climate-induced sea level rise added $8 billion to storm costs.
Guterres is stepping up his rhetoric on what he calls “climate chaos” and has urged richer nations to step up efforts to reduce carbon emissions, end fossil fuel use and help poorer nations. But countries’ energy plans show they produced twice the amount of fossil fuels in 2030 than would limit warming to internationally agreed levels, a 2023 UN report found.
Guterres said he hopes Pacific island nations will “speak loud and clear” at the next General Assembly, and because they contribute little to climate change, “they have the moral authority to ask those who are creating reverse the acceleration of sea level rise. trends.”
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Borenstein reported from Kensington, Maryland.
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Seth Borenstein and Charlotte Graham-McLay continued on X at @borenbears and @CGrahamMcLay
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Read more about AP’s climate coverage at http://www.apnews.com/climate-and-environment
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