A GROUP of islands off Papua New Guinea that are supposedly being drowned
because of global warming are in fact safe, 快猫短视频 has learned.
Contrary to recent reports, climate change and earthquakes are not to blame for
recent floods. The flooding is a temporary climate phenomenon, and a large
earthquake in mid-November actually raised the land by a few centimetres.
Early last year, seawater invaded low-lying agricultural land on the main
island of the Duke of York group. Scientific officers of the United Nations
Development Programme in Port Moresby concluded that the island was sinking by
between 10 and 15 centimetres a year.
Officials immediately said they would relocate the 20,000 islanders and last
week announced plans to move the first 1000 from the soggiest areas. Some media
coverage blamed global warming for the flooding and called the relocation a
鈥渄ress rehearsal鈥� for coastal dwellers worldwide. Reports put the rate of
sinking at 30 centimetres per year.
Advertisement
鈥淥ur measurements quite clearly show that hasn鈥檛 happened,鈥� says geologist
Paul Tregoning of the Australian National University in Canberra. He and his
colleagues used readings from Global Positioning System satellites to measure
the island鈥檚 elevation in 1995 and again in November this year.
He says the island has subsided no more than 12 centimetres in those five
years and actually rose by 3 centimetres during the 16 November quake. Even in
the tectonically active South Pacific鈥攚here each year islands rise and
fall by tiny amounts鈥攖hese movements are extreme. But they are still much
smaller than the reported sinking rate.
A more likely cause of flooding is the temporary 25-centimetre rise in
average sea levels in the region since early 1998. High atmospheric pressure off
South America during the 1998-99 La Ni帽a caused sea levels in the Western
Pacific to rise above normal. A coincidental series of severe storms may have
made matters worse by eroding sand bars and beaches, says Steve Saunders of the
Rabaul Volcano Observatory on the neighbouring island of New Britain.
鈥淭he way the media reported the sinking story would make a good story in
itself,鈥� Saunders told 快猫短视频. Most of the islands鈥� 60 square
kilometres were never threatened. They lie tens of metres above sea level and
are surrounded by sheer cliffs.
Global warming has little to do with flooding on any South Pacific islands,
says Chalapan Kaluwin, Climate Change Officer with the South Pacific Regional
Environment Programme in Samoa. 鈥淚t is difficult to talk about global warming at
this time, because the climate variability is so big.鈥� Melting polar ice is
expected to raise global sea levels by an average of 5 to 10 centimetres by
2025, but Kaluwin says the best estimate of the current rise in the South
Pacific is only 1 millimetre per year. 鈥淭he sea level is going to rise,鈥� he
says, 鈥渂ut it will take a lot of years.鈥�
