The Weather Notebook: Tuvalu

Tuvalu
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Hi, I'm Bryan Yeaton and this is the Weather Notebook.

Consider the nation of Tuvalu. It's a modest collection of nine tropical islands in the middle of the Pacific. All together, the nation takes up only about a tenth of the area of Washington, DC. Tuvalu has one radio station, one airport, and no military. But like the people of any other country, the 10,000 residents of Tuvalu are attached to their homeland. Their ancestors fished and foraged these low-lying coral atolls for hundreds of years. But this tradition is drawing to an end, because Tuvalu is the world's first country to be evacuated due to global climate change.

Most of Tuvalu lies only a few feet above sea level. The world's oceans rose about half a foot in the last century, and they’re expect to rise one to three more feet by the year 2100. But this isn't the only problem for Tuvalu.

The extra water adds to the force of waves and storm surge from tropical cyclones, or what Americans call hurricanes. In 1997 Tuvalu was hit by three cyclones. One island was left uninhabitable. Last year the Tuvalu government saw the writing on the wall, so it went to neighboring countries to find a new homeland. Australia turned them down, but New Zealand said yes. So starting in 2002, a quota of residents will move from Tuvalu to New Zealand each year for the next 30 to 50 years. Even if the Kyoto Protocol helps put the brakes on greenhouse gases, it's not likely to save Tuvalu. Generations from now, the country may be remembered only as a modern Atlantis, the first nation to be swallowed whole by the sea.

The Weather Notebook is a production of the Mount Washington Observatory and is supported generously by Subaru. For more on Tuvalu and global climate change, go to our website at weathernotebook.org. Thanks today to assistant producer Doug Sanborn.