June 6 - Low-lying Pacific islands 'growing NOT sinking' as sea levels rise‏

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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1283669/Low-lying-Pacific-islands-growing-sinking-sea-levels-rise.html

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David

Low-lying Pacific islands 'growing NOT sinking' as sea levels rise

By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 9:24 AM on 5th June 2010

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The island nation of Tuvalu which has been threatened by rising sea levels

Low-lying islands in the Pacific are 'growing' to counter rising sea levels, a study has found.

Scientists feared that many small islands would disappear under rising sea levels caused by climate change.

But researchers in New Zealand measured 27 islands where ocean levels have risen 4.8 inches in the past 60 years and found that just four had diminished in size.

Coral debris eroded from encircling reefs was pushed up on to the islands' coasts by winds and waves as weather patterns changed.

Professor Paul Kench, of Auckland University's environment school, said this showed that islands are coping with the changes.

He said: 'It has been thought that as the sea level goes up, islands will sit there and drown. But they won't. The sea level will go up and the island will start responding.

'They've always changed, but the consistency [with which] some of them have grown is a little surprising.'

Tuvalu, a coral-island group that climate change campaigners have predicted will be drowned, has its highest point just 14 feet above sea level but has actually grown in the past 60 years, the study in New Scientist found.

The research, which appeared in this week's New Scientist, found that seven of Tuvalu's nine islands had grown by more than 3 percent on average over the past 60 years.

In 1972, Cyclone Bebe dumped 346 acres of sediment on the eastern reef of Tuvalu, increasing the area of Funafuti, the main island, by 10 percent.

Another island, Funamanu, gained nearly 30 percent of its previous area.

On World Environment Day in 2008, Kiribati President Anote Tong warned parts of his island nation were already being submerged, forcing some of Kiribati's 94,000 people living in shoreline village communities to be relocated from century-old sites.

Worst case scenarios showed Kiribati would disappear into the sea within a century, he said at the time.

Professor Kench added: 'In other words, they (the islands) are slowly moving ... migrating across their reef platforms.'

'As the sea-level conditions and wave conditions are changing, the islands are adjusting to that.'

But he warned an accelerated rate of sea-level rise could be 'the critical environmental threat to the small island nations,' with 'a very rapid rate of island destruction' possible from a water depth beyond a certain threshold. That threshold currently is unknown.

Australian sea level oceanographer John Hunter said the findings 'are good news and not a surprise.'

'Coral islands can keep up with some sea-level rise, but (there's also) ocean warming ... and ocean acidification ... that are certainly problematic for the corals.

'Sea-level rise can actually make the islands grow - as it apparently is doing,' said Hunter.