Pacific Water Temps May Jump .82 Celsius, Dooming Corals

Global warming could lead to Pacific nations being battered by more frequent and extreme tropical cyclones. Samoan-born New Zealander Penehuro Fatu Lefale, a speaker at this week's Climate Change and Governance Conference in Wellington, said air temperatures in the Pacific could rise by up to 0.82 degrees celsius from 2010 to 2039.

The difficulty was in knowing where the point of no return was. “What is the threshold for a coral reef? They're already under a lot of stress from man-made pollution and so forth and they can only cope with sea temperatures of up to 26.5C, so an additional 0.4 makes all the difference,” he said.

Environmental changes would have economic and social consequences, “If you take away (people's) livelihood, if you don't have the corals there and you don't have insurance because of damage due to increased tropical cyclones, no one wants to invest there. Then the worst case scenario is that a lot of them say, `We want to move to New Zealand or Australia or other countries' and then you've created a whole lot more social problems. “he said

New Zealand should be adopting “no regrets” policies, Mr Lefale said. "We should really be supportive of those activities undertaken in Europe in terms of coming up with alternative technologies to oil, for example. “It may well turn out to be that water is the next biggest problem in the Middle East, not oil. People can live without oil but they cannot live without water.”

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