Global warming or not, ocean is rising over Pacific islands

MAJURO, Marshall Islands (AP): The people of the Central Pacific do not need science to understand one possible effect of global warming.

These Micronesians, whose islands spread from near the Philippines on the west to five hours from Hawaii on the east, require no charts or graphs to know that rising ocean water is a critical and constant presence in their lives.
When the moon is full, the ocean waves at high tide are several feet higher than ever in the past, according to longtime island residents.

The powder sand beach of Laura village at the tip of Majuro Atoll, Marshall Islands, is famous throughout the Marshalls for its beauty and tranquility.

But today, the beach is noticeably narrower. Some of its giant trees lie half in the ocean, half on the sand, their gnarled roots reaching up like the desperate fingers of the dying.

The 7,897-foot (2,407-meter) asphalt runway of the Amata Kabua International Airport, on the road from the capital, Majuro, to Laura, was constructed by building a causeway across several small islands. It is just wide enough for the two-lane road and the runway, the ocean on one side, the lagoon on the other.

This runway, only six feet (1.8 meters) above the ocean, is a major source of fresh drinking water as well as of tourism and trade. Sea walls have been built on both sides of the road to the airport and the runway itself, and are now being continued toward Laura.

“Sometimes, the ocean washes across this road. It never did before,” said a leading Marshallese, Carmen Bigler, president of Women United Together for the Marshall Islands and the first woman member of the former Congress of Micronesia.

The Star