Accelerating sea level rise and ocean warming and acidification threaten the Pacific islands, facing increasing threats to their socio-economic viability and very existence due to climate change, warned the Ministry of Health on Tuesday World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
In its State of the Climate in the Southwest Pacific 2023 report, the WMO details how sea level rise in the region is higher than the global average, with Surface temperatures rising up to three times faster than the global average since 1980.
As a result, the Marine heat waves have doubled in frequency since 1980 and are more intense and long-lasting.
Two reports, two urgent warnings
He Secretary General UN Secretary-General António Guterres presented the report on sea level rise prepared by the United Nations Climate Action Team at the Pacific Islands Forum in Tonga.
In this context, Guterres reiterated his call for halt the advance of the driver of rising sea levels: climate change.
“Sea level rise is a crisis created entirely by humanity. The world must act and respond to this SOS before it’s too late“, he stressed.
Leaders must rise to the occasion
Once again, Guterres asserted that world leaders must rise to the occasion. drastically cut global emissionslead the rapid and fair phase-out of fossil fuels and massively boost investments in adaptation to protect populations from present and future risks.
Global emissions need to be reduced by 43% compared to 2019 by 2030 and by 60% by 2035.
Governments also need to keep the promise made in the COP28 and present new national climate action plans next year that are aligned with the 1.5 degree Celsius limit set for global temperature increase by the end of the century compared to pre-industrial levels.
The most exposed despite their low emissions
The Pacific Islands account for just 0.02% of global emissions, but are uniquely exposed since They are low, 90% of its population lives less than five kilometres from the coast and half of its infrastructure is 500 metres from the sea.
Tonga, for example, is on the front line of climate change and is subject to dangerous phenomena such as tropical cyclones and flooding. To make matters worse, it suffered a volcanic eruption in January 2022 that unleashed a basin-wide tsunami and caused a massive injection of water vapor into the Earth’s atmosphere, affecting the global climate.
The WMO indicated that In 2023, 34 dangerous hydrometeorological phenomena were reported, Most of these were storm-related or flood-related, causing more than 200 deaths and affecting more than 25 million people in the region. In addition, severe tropical cyclones caused major economic losses.
The sea rose up to 15 centimeters
The study states that in much of the western tropical Pacific, sea level has increased between ten and 15 cm, almost double the global rate documented since 1993. In the central tropical Pacific, the rise has been between five and ten cm.
In annual terms, the average rate of sea level rise between January 1993 and May 2023 in the area ranges from 4.52 mm to 4.13 mm per year. The global average was about 3.4 mm per year during that period.
Rising sea levels have caused a dramatic increase in the frequency of coastal flooding since 1980 and global mean sea level is projected to continue to rise throughout this century in response to continued warming of the climate system. This will continue for centuries to millennia due to continued absorption of heat from the deep ocean and loss of mass from ice sheets.
Marine heat waves
Between 1981 and 2023, almost the entire southwestern Pacific region experienced ocean surface warming, reaching rates of more than 0.4°C per decade northeast of New Zealand and south of Australia, three times faster than the rate of global ocean surface warming.
Marine heat waves have become more intense and have almost doubled in frequency since 1980: From then until the 2000s, the average duration of marine heatwaves across much of the Pacific region was within the range of five to 16 days. However, this has increased markedly since 2010, and most of the Pacific now suffers heat waves of eight to 20 daysor even more.
The report cites as an extreme example the six-month marine heatwave duration occurring over a large area around New Zealand in 2023.
The increasing intensity of marine heat waves has far-reaching negative implications on ecosystems, economies and livelihoods in the Pacific. Moreover, even under moderate climate warming scenarios, marine heatwaves will become more frequent and last longer in the coming years.
Higher sea temperatures produced a 2023 mass bleaching of coral reefs throughout the tropics, including Australia’s Great Barrier Reef and large areas of the South Pacific.
The report noted that, in addition to climate change, events such as El Niño and La Niña drive warming as heat is redistributed from the surface to deeper layers.
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