Drowning atoll claims rejected by specialist

KIRIBATI - A tidal specialist has debunked claims that low-lying South Pacific nations are threatened by rapidly rising sea levels caused by global warming.

Australia-based Dr Wolfgang Scherer said that while sea levels had been rising since the ice-age, the average for the region was just 0.8mm a year, which was lower than the average 1mm to 2mm a year worldwide.

Dr Scherer is based in Adelaide and heads a monitoring project which Australia has funded to the tune of $14 million since 1991.

He collects data from 12 high-precision gauges stationed around the Pacific.

Dr Scherer, who outlined his research at the Pacific Islands Forum in Kiribati, said he was not dismissing the possibility that global warming might accelerate sea-level rises.

"The ocean has a very slow response time," he said. "But based on the data that is available so far there is no acceleration in sea level. So far it is not detectable."

He had also analysed the data recorded by various islands for between 25 and 92 years, before the new gauges.

He estimated the uncertainty of the old method was plus or minus 1cm when it was required to measure in millimetres.

Funding for the next stage of the project begins next year and it involves measuring the movement of land up and down using the Global Positioning System and how much that accounts for changing sea levels.

But he said that monitoring would require 20 or, preferably, 30 years.

A Suva-based Greenpeace climate change campaigner, Angie Heffernan, disputed his conclusions.

She cited a leaked report by the United Nations agency the Inter-Government Panel for Climate Change, which stated sea-rises last century were 10 times those of the past 3000 years.