tuvalu flooding case study

Commun. Their homeland is a low-lying country at risk from coastal flooding and therefore vulnerable to climate change. Other options such as constructing a floating island are also being explored, as is importing refuse from Australian mines to construct an energy wall to ring the atolls, breaking up the power of the sea as it smashes towards the islands. Kopp, R. E., Horton, R. M., Little, C. M., Mitrovica, J. X., Oppenheimer, M., Rasmussen, D. J., Strauss, B. H. & Tebaldi, C. (2014). During storm surges or the highest tides, the Pacific Ocean bubbles up from the sandy soil under Enna Siones small yellow house. The westerly wave direction likely contributed to the severity, as did the locally exceptional storm-swell events long duration; the overall timing and duration of the event was modulated by astronomical tides. Tuvalu: Tropical Cyclone Pam Situation Report No. It simply vanished in 1997. How is climate change affecting global weather? NPR's All Things Considered has spotlighted the tiny island nation at least twice, and Canada's CBC network has covered the story in Sinking Cities: Tuvalu. This is because the coral atolls on which its people are populated have extremely poor soils. Salvilivili has already been abandoned due to the rapidly rising sea levels The New Zealand government established an immigration program called the Pacific Access Category to help qualifying Tuvaluans start over in a safer environment. doi: 10.1007/s10712-011-9119-1. Maritime Boundaries Geodatabase: Maritime Boundaries and Exclusive Economic Zones (200NM), Version 11. doi: 10.14284/386, CrossRef Full Text Available online at: https://www.marineregions.org/ | Google Scholar, Ford, M., Merrifield, M. A., and Becker, J. M. (2018). Suria Eusala Paufolau (left, or above on mobile), acting chief of public health, says cases of fish poisoning began to climb a decade ago; around the same time the weather really started to go haywire. Kulp, Scott A., and Benjamin H. Strauss. At the local hospital, a specialist department has been set up to study and manage climate change-related illnesses. The islands of Tuvalu were first inhabited by Polynesian settlers from Samoa and/or Tonga and they were left largely untouched by Europeans until the 19th century. Tuvalu is one of thesmallest countries on Earth. When planes arent expected, children ride their bikes and play volleyball on the countrys airstrip, while young courting couples take lazy laps on their motorbikes. Social Impacts: 4:eaa9741. -The citizens are Tuvalu are being evacuation to either Now it is waterfront property. A2 Physical Geography - Plate Tectonics and Hazards. This narrated slideshow describes the impact of sea level rise on Tuvalu, one of the low-lying island nations in the South Pacific. Figure 1. Tuvalu has one of the world's smallest economies and has recently been featured in the news as it is becoming increasingly threatened by global warming and rising sea levels. He is also determined to see that the people he left behind have a chance for a new life some place else. Within each subplot the event closest to March 15, 2015 (i.e., associated with TC Pam) is highlighted with a red circle. These are summarized in Table 1; these locations are also plotted in Figure 2. may road is flooded on funafuti; 4000 (1/3 pop) already moved to Nz; 5mm rainfall above normal. 27, 21852208. Smithers, S. G., and Hoeke, R. K. (2014). Why does planning for economic growth, stability, full employment, and efficiency involve both risks and sacrifices? Sea Level Rise Projection Map - Tuvalu | Earth.Org Note that (hand drawn) inundation and erosion maps, and notes provided by the Tuvalu Public Works Department to the authors are provided in this articles Supplementary Material section. During king tides, the islands are battered by powerful waves that flood homes. Don Kennedy is a first-hand witness to the encroaching sea on Tuvalu's shores. If this sounds like a tidal wave of despair, the mood on the ground is far less acute. I think it would be a great shame for the world to allow that to happen. At Tuvalus Bureau of Meteorology, situated on the edge of the runway with pig pens to its left and the countrys prison to its right (home to just six inmates) Nikotemo Iona and his small team are working overtime as they crunch the latest rainfall measurements. Climate induced hazards such as rising sea levels, cyclones, tsunamis, droughts, flooding, king tides and saltwater intrusion have been an ever-increasing menace for the country. "This is the best island I know, and I think it's going to end up under the sea. Its terrain consists of low lying, narrow coral atolls and reefs and it is spread over nine islands which stretch for just 360 miles (579 km). "The crop is no good, but I'll keep planting.". Glob. The housewife and mother of five decamps from her airless concrete home to catch the breeze in a simple wooden shack by the waters edge. < 0.004 m) for the area and time period indicated in Figure 1, the hindcast overestimated the most extreme waves (Hs> 12) near TC Pams eye wall compared to the altimeter data by up to several meters (Supplementary Figure 1). Many large parcels of land used for palm plantations are no longer of any value, greatly affecting the local subsistence economy. Many people intend to migrate in response to climate change, says Iona, sitting inside his squat, concrete office, designed to stay upright and continue broadcasting during cyclone season, which is intensifying year on year. He points to what is left of his croplands. swallowing the island. Vanuatu, G. (2015). The maximum hindcast significant wave height (Hx) during TC Pams passage (March 617, 2015) is shown in subplot (a), which is normalized by the local 1-in-20 year annual exceedance probability (AEP) shown in subplot (b). As a small economically poor country Tuvalu has limited power to put forward its case for action in international negotiations on climate change. Erosion of the land cause of rising sea levels. doi: 10.1098/rsta.2010.0291. Even if the locals could plant successfully, there is now not enough rain to keep even simple kitchen gardens alive. But there is always a sense of fear about what is happening to our home.. On the hottest days, Leitu Frank feels like she cant breathe any more. In more recent years though, the flooding and soil salination have become such a problem in Tuvalu that the government there has made plans to evacuate the entire population to other countries as it is believed that Tuvalu will be completely submerged by the end of the 21st century. Popular radio shows have reported on the fragility and future of Tuvalu. 7:539646. doi: 10.3389/fmars.2020.539646. Entire atolls covered with trees have been stripped bare. NCEP Climate Forecast System Reanalysis Reforecast (CFSR) 6-hourly sea surface height (Saha et al., 2013); 2. o_lewis15. Data 6:77. doi: 10.1038/s41597-019-0083-9, Rueda, A., Cagigal, L., Pearson, S., Antolnez, J. The NCEP climate forecast system version 2. The "52 [small island] nations, home to . Scatterplot matrix of Tamana (Kiribati) event-based data identified by declustering extreme sea level events with integrated wave energy flux (CgE) above the 99.5 percentile threshold. Paris Agreement 2015 - legally binding global climate deal to limit global warming to below 2oC (PDF) Severe Flooding in the Atoll Nations of Tuvalu and Kiribati (2016). "Climate Tragedy: If We Drown Tuvalu, We Drown the Entire World" In the afternoons, people snooze in hammocks for hours, and light campfires on the beaches to fry fish and keep the mosquitoes away. J. Geophys. -Travelling on the island becomes a problem as it is In this study, we link a widespread series flooding, island overwash and erosion events in 2015 in the atoll nations of Tuvalu and Kiribati to locally extreme values of total water level (TWL), composed of regional sea-level, astronomic tide and wind-wave components. Nevertheless, as part of a group of countries, the ASIS (Alliance for Small Island States), and with support from climate change campaign groups such as 350.org (350.org, 2020), it has worked hard to highlight the need for action on climate change. Nursing Management Business and Economics Ethnicity Studies +90. Within each subplot the event closest to March 15, 2015 (i.e., associated with TC Pam) is highlighted with a red circle. Hb and TWL events which occurred during or up to 5 days after TCs which occurred within 5 days of empirical AEP events are labeled as such in Figure 6 and these TCs tracks are plotted in Figure 7. Image 'Illustration of where Tuvalu is located on a globe' - Copyright: Image 'A demonstration in support of the islands of Tuvalu' -, Image 'People in the sea in Tuvalu, holding up a banner' -, Image 'Managing coastal environments' - Copyright: Used with permission, Image 'Sea level rise | Case studies in England' -. 7 terms. Idier, D., Bertin, X., Thompson, P., and Pickering, M. D. (2019). This offers an opportunity to timely, easily understood information toward an increased efficiency of post disaster emergency efforts, and also provide a pathway for the development of a simple regional coastal inundation forecasting (or warning) system for locations where heights and datums of local coastal defenses may not be well know, and with computational need tailored to the current local resources. Its tiny land mass and a narrow resource base are the major constraints that have restricted Tuvalus economy. Most nations present agreed to lower their emissions but neither the United States nor Australia supported the Kyoto Protocol, refusing to sign the agreement because developing nations were not subject to the same restrictions on the amount of greenhouse gases they could produce. The handling editor declared a past co-authorship with several of the authors RKH, JA, and MW. To just abandon it at such a time as this, when it is hurting I dont feel comfortable. Similar to other studies (e.g., Hoeke et al., 2013; Wadey et al., 2017; Ford et al., 2018; Wandres et al., 2020), extreme wind-waves associated with a distant storm (swell) was the proximate cause, or trigger, of the flooding and erosion reported here. iv) 100 countries - with about 85% of the world's forests - promised to stop deforestation by 2030, UK CASE STUDY - National Impacts of Climate C, Chapter 14: Hazardous Earth - OCR A-Level Geo, Costa Rica case study - Sustaining Ecosystems, OCR A Level ELSS 4.2 Amazon Rainforest CASE S, OCR B GCSE Unit 6 Dynamic Development: Ethiop, OCR B GCSE Topic 7 UK in the 21st C Economic, OCR A Level GL 2.2b DEPOSITIONAL LANDFORMS. Geophys. Knapp, K. R., Kruk, M. C., Levinson, D. H., Diamond, H. J., Neumann, C. J., Knapp, K. R., et al. Change 1, 143166. Then browse over 1000 free courses on OpenLearn. This makes sense from a geomorphology perspective, since local storm ridges and other reef island features are highly dependent on local wave climate (e.g., Woodroffe, 2008; Vila-Concejo and Kench, 2017). (2019). Glob. 100% Success rate 10289 . Probabilistic 21st and 22nd Century Sea-Level Projections at a Global Network of Tide-Gauge Sites. Some Tuvalu residents have been forced to evacuate parts of the country because of rising sea levels. She folds washing and stares out at the unsettled turquoise sea, its moods and rhythms increasingly unpredictable, as its rising proximity threatens to strangle her family. However, these meta-model and statistical nearshore wave transformation models require detailed spatial data on reef morphology (reef flat widths, shoreline orientations, and slopes, etc.) "Last August," Prime Minister Saufatu Sopoanga explains, "on a clear, calm day, a sudden wave surge rolled in from the sea and washed across Funafuti into the lagoon, flooding houses. It then moved along a southerly track between Fiji and New Caledonia, generating wind-waves of up to approximately 15 m, before exiting the region around March 15th. Where TWL or Hb empirical AEP events have occurred during or up to 5 days after the occurrence of a TC in the region (see Figure 6) are highlighted with green circles and labeled with the TC name; the event associated with TC Pam is highlighted with a red circle. Time series plot of estimated breaking wave height (Hb, red), wave setup/runup (2, black) and total water level (TWL, blue) for selected islands listed in Table 1, from March 6March 20, 2015. At Tamana (Kiribati), maximum CgE (and thus estimated wave setup/runup) was by far the highest in the entire hindcast record, on the order of 40% higher than the next highest event in terms of CgE (Figure 4). These are detailed in following sub-sections. ORAS5 monthly values are linearly interpolated to the (hourly) times of the wave hindcast (years 19792019) to represent non-tidal sea levels (SL); throughout the remainder of this article, SL refers to that derived from ORAS5 sea surface height values. This has led to concern that island nations are especially vulnerable to coastal flooding (Nicholls et al., 2007; Seneviratne et al., 2012), particularly the atoll nations of Kiribati, Tuvalu, Marshall Islands and Maldives (Barnett and Adger, 2003; Nicholls et al., 2011). As of today, there are no major forms of flood control, be it sea walls or relocation plans. The housewife and mother of five decamps from her airless concrete home to catch the breeze in a simple wooden shack by the waters edge. Tuvalus official government policy is to stay on the island come what may. The SLR scenarios used in this study are based on the forecasts from Climate Central Coastal Risk Screening Tool with the following parameters: From two highly cited journals by Kopp et al., estimating SLR mainly due to ocean thermal expansion and ice melt. But up close, the fragility of the land reveals itself. 40, 16031630. Learn. South Florida got some crazy, record-breaking rain and flooding last week. Added to this is the additional problem of sea temperature rise, leading to coral bleaching and impacts on marine life. Geneva: IPCC. Am. Tuvalu, a dot on the globe, but home to 11,500 people and 1000 km away from the next ATM , face an existential threat. 32 & 30 & 35 & 33 & 31 \\ - People are forced to leave islands such as Tipuku doi: 10.1038/s41586-018-0194-z, Ribal, A., and Young, I. R. (2019). Television stations, newswires, numerous other magazines, and newspapers have covered the plight of Tuvalu's people faithfully and exhaustively, calling them the world's first environmental refugees. To establish a timeline, choose a location on Tuvalu and find out its elevation. 14. 1999-2023. Siaosi Finiki, 68, the chief of Funafuti, gives the history of ten generations of his family, who lived on Tuvalu and survived by fishing and farming. Why or why Lett. Nat. Sione, her husband and four children are planning to migrate to New Zealand in the next two years to join more than 2,000 of fellow Tuvaluans already resident in the country; a migrant population that doubles every five years. Social Impacts: Indeed, over 30 years ago (in 1989) a United Nations report stated that Tuvalu would vanish in the twenty-first century unless global warming was drastically reduced (Mason, n.d.). Copyright Get Revising 2023 all rights reserved. 41, 72457253. To assess the skill of TPXO-based tidal predictions used in this study, they were compared to tidal predictions based on hourly tide gauge observations from Tarawa and Funafuti (years 19882018 and 19792017, respectively) sourced from the University of Hawaii Sea Level Center (4 Caldwell et al., 2015). , Help with Geography Alevel question aqa , Environmental threats to our planet (OCR Geography A), GCSE Geography- Unit 1A- The restless Earth, Living World - Thar Desert Case Study (LEDC), flooding is more frequent. Case Study: Tuvalu. Need a personal essay writer? Differentiate. doi: 10.1007/s11069-018-3183-5, Hemer, M. A., Zieger, S., Durrant, T., OGrady, J., Hoeke, R. K., McInnes, K. L., et al. Call for change. Coastal flooding in the maldives: an assessment of historic events and their implications. The high-frequency (remainder) residual variance at both sites is 0.001 m, i.e., 510 times less than that of the monthly variance; which is fairly typical of low-latitude Pacific locations where sea level variability is dominated by seasonal and interannual (e.g., ENSO) dynamics (Merrifield et al., 1999; Church et al., 2006; Zhang and Church, 2012). a group of nine small islands in the South Pacific. Locals say they feel it could be much sooner. 9 Articles, This article is part of the Research Topic, https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2020.539646, https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2020.539646/full#supplementary-material, https://data.csiro.au/collections/collection/CIcsiro:6616v8, https://www.ecmwf.int/en/research/climate-reanalysis/ocean-reanalysis, https://reliefweb.int/report/tuvalu/tuvalu-cyclone-nina-jan-1993-dha-undro-situation-report-1, https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/vanuatu_tc_pam_hap.pdf, Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). & Strauss, B. H. (2019). (2018), and Wandres et al. Global sea-level rise is caused by the melting of ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica and the expansion of seawater as it heats up (Humphreys, 2019a). One of the smallest islands, called Te Pukasavilivili actually disappeared in 1997. Peak wave direction (Dp) for each event is indicated by red arrow on the Hb AEPs, respectively. The severity of these remote impacts was not anticipated and poorly forecasted. During COP [climate] negotiations we had to stay up till 7am to ensure we were listened too, says Tinilau. This resulting proxy for flooding severity was compared to the recorded flooding and erosion impacts; the relative contribution of waves, tides and background sea level to TWL were assessed, as was event duration and wave direction. Tuvalu is sinking is the local catch-all phrase for the effects of climate change on this tiny island archipelago on the frontline of global warming. Distant-source swells cause coastal inundation on Fijis coral coast. Starchy Pacific Island staples such as taro and cassava now have to be imported at great expense, along with most other food. (2002). In addition, more frequent floods could cause more waterborne disease such as dysentery. Received: 02 March 2020; Accepted: 27 October 2020;Published: 22 January 2021. 5. (n.d.) Tuvalu: Flooding, Global Warming, and Media Coverage, http://www.moyak.com/papers/tuvalu-climate-change.html, https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/oct/23/former-tuvalu-pm-says-he-was-stunned-by-scott-morrisons-behaviour-at-pacific-islands-forum Accessed 7th February 2020, https://www.adaptation-undp.org/explore/polynesia/tuvalu. Location:In the Pacific Ocean, North-East of Australia. Impact of climate change. Predicted IMPACTS (SEEP) Evidence please.. -Evacuation of people to the main island of Funafuti, Sci. 22 terms. Event duration at Nui (Figure 5) was also among the top three events, and likely contributed to the extensive erosion recorded at many of the locations in Tuvalu, as in Kiribati. "The big waves and winds and storms used to come in November and December," he adds. J. Geophys. (2011). Tuvalu wields new data in the fight against climate change "I'm worried about the islands," said one woman with tears in her eyes. Personalise your OpenLearn profile, save your favourite content and get recognition for your learning. Introduction Tuvalu is one of the smallest countries in the world, after the Vatican, Monaco, and Nauru. Ciavola, P and Coco, G, 12749. ICRC (2018). Emergency Plan of Action Final Report Pacific Region: Tropical Cyclone Pam. including the Maldives, Kiribati and Tuvalu, are already grappling with the effects of sea level rise. sinking of Tuvalu as an example, -The G3 might be held responsible for not rectifying the No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. (2013), Wadey et al. Sea Level Measured by Tide Gauges from Global Oceans the Joint Archive for Sea Level Holdings, Version 5.5. What are the documented case studies about specific Tuvalu people? How is climate change affecting plants and animals? A mean annual warming of 2 degrees Celsius or higher by the 2050s and 3 degrees Celsius for the 2080s is projected. In the meantime, Tuvalu has its own Coastal Adaption Plan. To reduce complexity of the extreme value (statistical) analysis, we focus on four of the previously defined variables: CgE (wave energy flux), Dp (peak wave direction), tide, and SL as well as event duration, which arises from the analysis. All rights reserved. 806 8067 22 Tuvalu, Global Warming, and Rising Sea Levels. Such case studies can also better inform the development of early warning forecast systems, which are essential in the face of likely increased flooding and erosion events (Storlazzi, 2018), by identifying the relative importance of the extreme sea level processes and indications of local vulnerability. The largest city in Tuvalu is Funafuti with a population of 5,300 as of 2003. All state agency activities, whether directly undertaken, funded, or approved by an agency, must also be evaluated in terms of significant environmental impacts under the State Environmental Quality Review program, which includes a substantial increase in flooding as a criteria of significance. Sci. Available online at: https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/vanuatu_tc_pam_hap.pdf (accessed January 15, 2020).
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