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...1903. a century later, annual high tides rise halfway up the bedposts. Last year, those same titles washed away a massive stone-and-steel breakwater just months after Tapungao's students built it.
Soon the entire nation of Tuvalu, a chain of nine coral islands totaling just ten square miles, may suffer a similar fate. If the best guesses of scientists hold true, this diminutive country 400 miles north of Fiji will become a casualty of climate change. Last year was the second-warmest on record. according to the United Nations' World Meteorological Organization. And an exhaustive report issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change anticipates that temperatures will climb 2.5 to 10.4 degrees Fahrenheit by century's end, raising sea levels as much as 2.8 feet as warmer water expands and glacial ice continues to melt.
That may not sound like a lot, but with Tuvalu's average elevation only a half dozen feet above sea level, and its capital atoll of Funafuti already a sliver of land--400 yards at its widest and tapering in places to scarcely 10 yards--it won't take much to wreak havoc. (Other low-lying nations in the same neighborhood, including Kiribati, Niue, and the Marshall Islands, are in similar straits.) Of greater immediate concern, the changing climate is also bringing higher tides and fiercer, more frequent storms that are already eroding burial grounds and washing out crops. Within the lifetime of some of today's residents, these surges will likely turn Tuvalu into an uninhabitable collection of rocks.
Environmental...
NOTE: All illustrations and photos
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