UN chief sends global SOS after new reports warn Pacific sea levels are rising above global average

CNN
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A “global catastrophe” threatens the Pacific islands and the world must respond to the unprecedented and devastating impacts of rising sea levels “before it is too late,” warned the UN chief.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres sent a global SOS – “Save our Seas” – from the Pacific island nation of Tonga on Tuesday, asking the world to “massively increase funding and support for vulnerable countries” that are seriously threatened by the man-made climate crisis.

“The ocean is overflowing,” Guterres said. “This is a crazy situation: rising sea levels are a crisis caused entirely by humanity. A crisis that will soon reach almost unimaginable proportions, and there is no lifeboat to take us to safety.”

Guterres' dire warning came at a meeting of the Pacific Islands Forum in the Tongan capital Nuku'alofa and coincided with the release of two UN reports detailing how the climate crisis is accelerating catastrophic changes in the ocean.

According to the World Meteorological Organization’s “State of the Climate,” sea surface temperatures in the southwest Pacific have risen three times faster than the global average since 1980.

And sea levels in the region have risen almost twice as fast as the global average over the past 30 years, the report says.

During this time, the frequency of marine heat waves has doubled, according to the report, and they have become more intense and longer lasting.

The report says that 90 percent of global warming has been absorbed by the oceans, caused by humans burning fossil fuels, which releases heat-trapping pollutants.

This warming of the oceans amplifies sea level rise because water expands when it warms and the melting of ice sheets and glaciers adds to its volume.

The Pacific Islands are hardest hit by global warming, sea level rise and acidification, which damage ecosystems, destroy crops, contaminate freshwater sources and destroy livelihoods.

Floods and tropical storms are already devastating the islands. According to the report, in 2023, 34 “hydrometeorological hazard events”, mostly storm or flood-related, resulted in more than 200 deaths and affected 25 million people in the region.

The ocean is undergoing “changes that will be irreversible for centuries to come,” said WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo.

“Human activities have weakened the ocean's ability to feed and protect us and, through sea level rise, are turning a lifelong friend into a growing threat.”

In a second report released on Tuesday, the UN climate action team said the climate crisis and rising sea levels were “no longer distant threats”, particularly for the Pacific.

Although the Pacific islands only account for 0.02 percent of global emissions, they are nevertheless “particularly at risk,” Guterres said.

“This is a region with an average altitude of only one to two meters above sea level, where about 90 percent of the people live less than five kilometers from the coast and half of the infrastructure is less than 500 meters from the sea,” he said.

If global warming continues at three degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the Pacific Islands would face a further sea level rise of at least 15 centimeters and more than 30 days of flooding per year by 2050, the report said.

In 2021, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that it was “clear” that humans had caused the climate crisis and that “far-reaching and rapid changes” had already occurred, some of them irreversible.

Tuesday's report said: “Recent research on climate 'tipping points' and ice sheet dynamics is causing scientists to worry that future sea level rise could be much larger and occur sooner than previously thought.”

Although the Pacific islands face “severe and disproportionate” impacts of rising sea levels, it is a global problem that poses “major risks to the security and sustainability of many low-lying islands, populous coastal metropolises, large tropical agricultural deltas and Arctic communities,” the climate experts said.

Both reports call on world leaders to improve early warning systems for vulnerable communities, significantly increase funding for resilience and adaptation, and cut emissions dramatically, quickly and immediately to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius – a critical threshold below which leaders say warming must not be exceeded to avoid catastrophic climate impacts.

“The stormy sea is coming for all of us,” said Guterres.

“The world must look to the Pacific and listen to the science… if we save the Pacific, we save ourselves.”