'A Crisis Entirely of Humanity's Making': UN Chief Issues Climate SOS on Trip To Pacific

Pacific island nations are in 'grave danger' from rising sea levels and the world must 'answer the SOS before it is too late,' the UN chief has warned during a visit to Tonga. From a report: The UN secretary general, AntÃnio Guterres, urged the world to 'look to the Pacific and listen to the science' as he released two new reports on the sidelines of the Pacific Islands Forum, the region's most important annual political gathering. Sea-surface temperatures in the south-west Pacific have risen three times faster than the global average since 1980, according to a regional report compiled by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and released on Tuesday. It also found that marine heatwaves in the region had roughly doubled in frequency since 1980 and become more intense and longer-lasting.

The report said 34 mostly storm or flood-related 'hydrometeorological hazard events' in the south-west Pacific last year led to more than 200 deaths and affected more than 25 million people. In a second report published on Tuesday, the UN's climate action team warned that the climate crisis and sea-level rise were 'no longer distant threats,' especially for the Pacific's small island developing states. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded with high confidence in 2021 that the global mean sea level was rising at rates unprecedented in at least the last 3,000 years as a result of human-induced global warming.

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