WMO: Pacific island nations facing threefold climate shock

By the Climate Centre

A “triple whammy” of rising seas combined with their warming and acidification is confronting Pacific island nations with “growing threats to their socioeconomic viability and indeed their very existence because of climate change,” the World Meteorological Organization said today.

The WMO’s State of the Climate in the South-West Pacific 2023 report details how sea levels there are rising faster than the global average – in much of the western tropical Pacific by as much as 15cm since 1993 or nearly twice the global rate since then.  

Sea-surface temperatures have risen three times faster than the global average since 1980, while marine heatwaves have approximately doubled since 1980 and are more intense and last longer.

The report was released by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo at the Pacific Islands Forum in Tonga, accompanied by a briefing document on Surging Seas in a Warming World that Mr Guterres described as “an SOS on sea-level rise.”

WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo said today: “The ocean has taken up more than 90 per cent of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gases and is undergoing changes which will be irreversible for centuries to come.

“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.

“Already we are seeing more coastal flooding, shoreline retreat, saltwater contamination of freshwater supplies and displacement of communities.”

Ocean acidity

There were at least 34 reported hydrometeorological hazard events in the region in 2023 – most of them storm or flood related – leading to over 200 fatalities and impacting more than 25 million people, the WMO says.

Tropical Cyclones Kevin and Judy were notorious for making landfall on Vanuatu within 48 hours of each other last March (photo), for example, followed by Cyclone Lola in October that triggered a six-month state of emergency in affected provinces.

In 2023 there was also massive bleaching of coral reefs throughout the tropics, including in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef and large areas of the South Pacific, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration quoted in the new WMO report, while a Hawaii-based measuring station recorded at least a 12 per cent increase in acidity over the period 1988–2020.

The Red Cross Red Crescent 2021 Turning the Tide report includes compelling first-hand accounts both of the endangerment of global coastal communities and their fightback in countries like Mexico, Somalia and Bangladesh.

The Red Cross in Vanuatu had grave concerns over the increase in infectious bacterial leptospirosis after the two back-to-back Category 4 cyclones last March. The National Society worked to contain the situation with health awareness in six provinces (pictured). Secretary General Dickinson Tevi said: “It is usually in the aftermath of any cyclone that we see an increase in diseases such as leptospirosis [from] contaminated water sources,” affecting both people and animals. (Photo: Vanuatu Red Cross via IFRC)