Oceania – Pacific Islands

This is part of the Regional Summary series at www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming

There are very few temperature stations in Oceania with data as far back as 1950. The only ones that exist show warmer temperatures in the 1930s – 1940s.

However, the main focus in Oceania relative to global warming is in terms of sea level rise. Tuvalu is one of the “poster-children” for global warming and has been experiencing erosion (for example: “Tuvalu is Drowning” [http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/03/31/tuvalu/index_np.html]: “The island nation is slowly being inundated as the ocean rises, and some citizens are fleeing. How will the world handle a flood of "climate refugees"?”). But reality and hype are two different stories. For exmaple, “The Canary is Drowning: Tiny Tuvalu Fights Back Against Climate Change” [http://globalpolicy.igc.org/nations/micro/2002/1203canary.htm]: "They've been making a case in international assemblies seeking assistance, demanding financial repartitions form the industrialized world,… many climate change models say it's too late for Tuvalu"

The following image shows a series of seal level plots for various islands in Oceania (sea level plots are from the UK-based Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level database [http://www.pol.ac.uk/psmsl]). Tuvalu is included here as are all available “long-term” sea level stations in the PSMSL database. Sea level rise is at most very small in most of these locations, including Tuvalu.

The following figure shows the sea level anomalies from the SeaFrame sea level study including many of the same islands shown above. [http://www.bom.gov.au/ntc/IDO60033/IDO60033.2006.pdf ]

The following figure provides a closer look at the SeaFrame sea level data at Funafuti, Tuvalu for 1994 to 2006.

The following figure shows the mean sea level for Tuvalu from the Joint Archive of Sea Level data (same report as cited above), with data starting in 1978.