UN Secretary-General, Guterres, Generates SOS Warning (Save Our Seas)

UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, warns of the rising sea levels worldwide. He asks for a warning to be launched named SOS (Save Our Seas).

Sea levels are rising at an accelerated rate, Guterres said, after reviewing that Pacific island might be in danger due to this prevalent issue. Therefore, he issued a climate warning to the world, SOS, which now stands for “Save Our Seas”.

A joint report from the United Nations and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) was released on Monday that indicated a worsened rise in the sea levels. The rising levels could trigger Earth sheets and ice melting at a higher rate than before.

The report also demonstrates that not only Southwestern Pacific is at high risk, but also climate change and extreme global warming could create ocean acidification and marine heat waves.

The secretary general of the World Meteorological Organization, Celeste Saulo, cited that because of the rising sea levels, the ocean, which was once considered a friend of human lives, is now seen as a “growing threat”.

Guterres chose to issue a warning after touring Samoa and Tonga. He made his climate plea at Tonga’s meeting of the Pacific Islands Forum on Tuesday. Tonga is one of the member countries that are making efforts for climate change.

The report submitted to Guterres said that…

The report was submitted to Guterres’ office that mentioned sea levels near Tonga’s capital Nuku’alofa have increased by 21 centimeters, approximately 8.3 inches in the last three decades (from 1990 to 2020). It is more than twice the average global level of increase, which is 10 centimeters.

Apia and Samoa have experienced 31 centimeters of increase while Suva-B and Fiji have 29 centimeters.

The United Nations General Assembly is expected to set a meeting next month only to discuss rising sea levels.

Guterres alarmingly said, “This is a crazy situation. Rising seas are a crisis entirely of humanity’s making. A crisis that will soon swell to an almost unimaginable scale, with no lifeboat to take us back to safety”.

He explained that this upcoming worldwide catastrophe is putting Pacific paradise at risk as a result of which the oceans would overflow, for which SOS warning is mandatory.  The communities living near the Pacific area are in “grave danger” as 90 per cent of the region’s population lives within 5 kilometers of Pacific waters.

The coastal flooding situation is also an SOS situation since Guam witnesses flooding 22 times a year from twice a year as compared to 1980. The same stands true for Cook that observes 43 times a year as compared to the five times of coastal flooding every year.

Pago Pago experienced the worst coastal flooding than ever as it went up to 102 times a year from zero. The measures are generated by the WMO State of the Climate in the South-West Pacific report of 2023.

WMO also declared that the western edges of the Pacific Ocean are rising at twice the faster rate than the global average. The central Pacific is now coming closer to the global average, WMO informed.

The United Nations officials also calculated that the water levels of the western tropical Pacific are rising at an even faster rate where the melting ice from western Antarctica is directed. The warm waters are causing disturbances in the ocean currents, producing an overall global alarm.

A retired US Geological Survey scientist particularly for the sea levels, S. Jeffress Williams, said in an email that the Antarctic and Greenland have seen more melting in the past three to four decades, which is creating a high aggravation in the warming rates of the poles.

Williams was not related to the report but corroborated the UN findings that 90 per cent of the heat trapped by greenhouse gases is released into the oceans, causing great troubles in seawater in the times coming ahead.