UN's Guterres issues global SOS over fast-rising Pacific Ocean

New report by World Meteorological Organisation finds sea levels accelerating in Pacific Ocean

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres speaks in the Tongan capital Nuku'alofa on August 26. AP

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres issued a world climate SOS at a Pacific islands summit on Tuesday, unveiling research that shows the region's seas are rising much more swiftly than global averages.

“I am in Tonga to issue a global SOS – Save Our Seas – on rising sea levels. A worldwide catastrophe is putting this Pacific paradise in peril,” Mr Guterres said.

Sea level rises in the Pacific Ocean are outstripping the global average, a World Meteorological Organisation report showed on Tuesday, imperilling low-lying island states.

Globally, sea level advances are accelerating as higher temperatures driven by the continued burning of fossil fuels melt ice sheets, while warmer oceans cause water molecules to expand, Reuters reported.

But compared to the global average rate rise of 3.4 millimetres a year over the past three decades, the WMO report showed that the average annual increase was “significantly higher” in two measurement areas of the Pacific, north and east of Australia.

“Human activities have weakened the capacity of the ocean to sustain and protect us and, through sea level rise, are transforming a lifelong friend into a growing threat,” WMO Secretary General Celeste Saulo said in a statement to coincide with the release of the regional State of the Climate report 2023 at a forum in Tonga.

Already, such rises have brought a surge in the frequency of coastal flooding since 1980, with dozens of instances in places such as the Cook Islands and French Polynesia which previously reported handful of cases a year.

“This new report confirms what Pacific leaders have been saying for years,” Australian climate researcher Wes Morgan told AFP.

“Climate change is their top security threat. Pacific nations are in a fight for survival and cutting climate pollution is key to their future.”

Such events are sometimes caused by tropical cyclones, which scientists think could also be intensifying due to climate change, as sea surface temperatures climb.

More than 34 hazards such as storms and floods were reported in the Pacific region in 2023, resulting in more than 200 deaths, the WMO report said, adding that only a third of small island developing states had early warning systems.

A WMO representative said that the effects of rising water levels on Pacific islands were disproportionately high since their average elevation is just a metre or two above sea level.

To raise awareness of the dangers, Tuvalu's foreign minister gave a speech to the UN climate conference in 2021 while standing knee-deep in seawater, making global headlines.

But the WMO report said more rises across the planet would “continue for centuries to millennia due to continuing deep ocean heat uptake and mass loss from ice sheets”.