Tiny island states that speck the vast swathe of the Pacific Ocean have a far greater importance in understanding global climate change than their tiny populations would suggest. This was the message given to delegates during a side event of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change”s 19th annual meeting in Warsaw today.
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The delegates from Fiji and Samoa
believe their nations do not get the support they need to conduct vital climate
observations in the region.
“In terms of climate change, up to 90
per cent of heat is absorbed by oceans, so understanding how the oceans behave
is critical to understanding how the atmosphere will change,” says Neville
Koop, a climatology advisor with the Samoan delegation.
Considering the huge marine areas
that Pacific nations cover — Kiribati consists of 800 square kilometres of
coral atolls spread over an area half the size of Europe — the poor
observational capacity of island states creates a large gap in the global
climate data set, he says.
Better oceanic and high altitude
measurements, as well as more rudimentary metrics such as rainfall and
atmospheric pressure are vital for producing more accurate climate models, Koop
adds.
Furthermore, as the birthplace of the
El Niño Southern Oscillation weather system that periodically warms the waters
of the Pacific Ocean, this patch of ocean influences climates across Asia,
Africa and the Americas, and so accurate observations are necessary to predict
future changes, he says.
But with populations often in the
tens of thousands, these states” meteorological agencies can never hope to
fulfill this vital task alone, Koop says.
Some governments, such as the United
Kingdom”s, are already working to increase the observational capacity in the
Pacific, but a concerted international effort is needed to fully plug the data
gaps, he says.
Read more at SciDev.Net.
Island
and underwater
images via Shutterstock. Morphed by Robin Blackstone.