South Pacific sea levels seen needing more study
Date: 30-Oct-00
Country: KIRIBATI
Author: Ellen Read
Wolfgang Scherer, director of the South Pacific Sea Level and Climate Change Programme, delivered his remarks at a news briefing on the project, which aims to generate an accurate record of variance in long-term sea level and selected climatic variables in the region.
"What I'm trying to show from the historical data is that so far there is no signal there, in terms of a major climate change kind of signal, in the acceleration of sea level rises," Scherer said.
"But because the ocean response time is very slow, it would take a long time to respond (so) we have to continue monitoring," said Scherer.
On Friday a report commissioned by environmental group Greenpeace said rising sea levels and sea temperatures caused by global warming may devastate the economies of several small South Pacific nations over the next 20 years.
Scherer was speaking ahead of an annual summit on Sunday of the Pacific Island Leaders Forum at which leaders of up to 16 South Pacific nations will gather in Kiribati, a tiny nation of low-lying coral islands straddling the equator.
"The evidence is building that the oceans are warming but so far we still have not seen any change in the sea level rise rate so that acceleration is not there," he said.
Scherer said Australia, which funded the first two phases of the programme which started in 1991, had committed to funding a third five-year phase.
He said it would take at least 30 years of data to show accurate trends.
Scherer said he was confident a report by the U.N.-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, due for release in February, would also show no acceleration in sea change.
"It will recognise that on the historical data, even on a global basis, there is no evidence of accelerations," he told Reuters following the briefing, adding that as a contributor he had seen some sections of the report.