SINGAPORE: Unprecedented heatwaves within the Southwest Pacific affected greater than 10 per cent of the worldwide ocean floor in 2024, damaging coral reefs and placing the area’s final remaining tropical glacier prone to extinction, the UN’s climate physique stated on Thursday (Jun 5).
Common 2024 temperatures within the area – which covers Australia and New Zealand in addition to southeast Asian island states like Indonesia and the Philippines – had been practically half a level Celsius increased than the 1991-2020 imply, the World Meteorological Group stated in an annual report.
“A lot of the area noticed at the very least extreme marine warmth wave situations in some unspecified time in the future throughout the course of 2024, significantly in areas close to and south of the equator,” stated the WMO’s Blair Trewin, one of many report’s authors.
Excessive warmth over the 12 months affected 40 million sq km of ocean, and new temperature highs had been set within the Philippines and Australia, the report stated. Ocean floor temperatures additionally broke data, whereas whole ocean warmth content material was the second-highest annual common, behind 2022.
An unprecedented variety of cyclones, which specialists have attributed to local weather change, additionally prompted havoc within the Philippines in October and November.
Sea ranges proceed to rise extra rapidly than the worldwide common, an pressing downside in a area the place greater than half the inhabitants reside inside 500m of the coast, the report added.
The report additionally cited satellite tv for pc knowledge exhibiting that the area’s sole tropical glacier, situated in Indonesia on the western a part of the island of New Guinea, shrank by as much as 50 per cent final 12 months.
“Sadly, if this price of loss continues, this glacier could possibly be passed by 2026 or shortly thereafter,” stated the WMO’s Thea Turkington, one other of the report’s authors.
