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sea level rise
Nearly a Third of Tuvalu Residents Seek Climate Visas to Australia as Sea Engulfs Their Home
Scientists say the Pacific island nation will likely be uninhabitable by 2100.
Jun 26, 2025
With more than three weeks to go until the deadline for citizens of Tuvalu to apply for a limited number of visas as part of an agreement with Australia, nearly a third of people in the tiny Pacific island nation had registered by Thursday in hopes of emigrating from one of the world's most climate-vulnerable countries.
After a 2024 climate migration pact between the two nations, the Falepili Union, citizens of Tuvalu are eligible to apply for 280 Australian visas that will be given out each year.
Registration for the inaugural visas began last week, and within four days, 3,125 Tuvaluans had entered a lottery to win one. Tuvalu is home to about 10,643 people, according to 2022 census figures.
The Falepili Union was agreed to two years after leaders from Tuvalu proposed a fossil fuel nonproliferation treaty at the 27th United Nations Climate Change Conference in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, making it the second Pacific island nation to demand an international agreement to stop the extraction of the planet-heating fossil fuels that have made Tuvalu one of the world's most vulnerable countries to the climate emergency.
Scientists say Tuvalu, which includes nine low-lying islands and atolls, could be uninhabitable by the end of the century due to rising sea levels.
The islands also see an average of one tropical cyclone in their vicinity per year, with storms often hitting in quick succession and exposing homes and other structures to high winds and extreme rainfall. The nation's gross domestic product fell by more than 25% in 2015 due to Cyclone Pam, which temporarily displaced 45% of the population, contaminated drinking water, and killed livestock. Due to the impact on agriculture across several Pacific Islands, roughly 166,000 people needed immediate food aid in the aftermath of the storm.
Two of the country's coral atolls have mostly been lost to sea-level rise, making the islands more vulnerable to storms.
By 2100, sea levels are projected to rise by more than two feet and Tuvalu is expected to face flooding for nearly a third of every year.
A spokesperson for Australia's Foreign Affairs Department told The Guardian that the Falepili Union is "the first agreement of its kind anywhere in the world, providing a pathway for mobility with dignity as climate impacts worsen."
Tuvaluans who obtain Australian visas under the pact will be eligible for Medicare, disability insurance, family tax benefits, childcare subsidies, and other benefits.
Earlier this month, Tuvalu was included in a draft list of countries where the Trump administration was considering imposing travel bans, in an internal cable sent by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The administration said Tuvalu's inclusion was a mistake.
The pact with Australia commits the Australian government to defending Tuvalu from military aggression and health pandemics as well as "natural disasters."
"For the first time," Tuvaluan Prime Minister Feleti Teo said when the agreement was signed, "there is a country that has committed legally to recognize the future statehood and sovereignty of Tuvalu despite the detrimental impact of climate change-induced sea-level rise."
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'The News Is Grim': Climate Study Holds Stark Warning on Failure to Curb Emissions
"If you look at this year's update, things are all moving in the wrong direction," said one of the scientists behind the study.
Jun 19, 2025
A new scientific report published Thursday paints a bleak picture in which global temperatures are increasing at an unprecedented rate that one researcher said shows humanity is "moving in the wrong direction" when it comes to battling the climate crisis.
The third installment of the Indicators of Global Climate Change update tracks changes in climate systems in between the releases of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) science reports, the most recent of which, known as AR6, was published in 2021. Indicators of Global Climate Change was put together by dozens of international scientists.
"Our new paper updating key metrics in the IPCC is now out, and the news is grim," wrote Zeke Hausfather, one of the authors behind the report, on X.
Key findings include that human induced warming is now at 1.36ºC and that Earth also experienced a sharp increase in its energy imbalance, the gap between the amount of energy Earth receives from the sun and the amount it radiates back out.
When it comes to sea level rise, global mean sea level has increased by around 26 mm between 2019 and 2024, "more than doubling the long-term rate of 1.8 mm per year since the turn of the 20th century," according to a summary of the report released by Earth System Science Data.
"If you look at this year's update, things are all moving in the wrong direction," said one of the authors involved in the study, Piers Forster, head of the University of Leed's Priestley Centre for Climate Futures.
Last year was the hottest year on record and, according to the World Meteorological Organization, it was the first year in which global temperatures averaged more than 1.5ºC above the preindustrial average.
Increasing emissions and rising temperatures are also diminishing Earth's carbon budget, a measure of how much carbon dioxide can still be emitted thanks to human activity while keeping below the 1.5ºC target set by the 2015 Paris agreement.
Under the 2015 Paris agreement, signatory countries pledged to reduce their global greenhouse gas emissions with the aim of keeping global temperature rise this century to 1.5ºC, well below 2°C above preindustrial levels. According to the United Nations, going above 1.5ºC on an annual or monthly basis doesn't constitute failure to reach the agreement's goal, which refers to temperature rise over decades.
Based on the shrinking carbon budget and current rate of emissions, the scientists warn that the world is likely to breach the goal set by the Paris agreement in only a few year's time.
"We are already in crunch time for these higher levels of warming," co-author Joeri Rogelj, a professor of climate science and policy at Imperial College London, told members of the media.
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Despite Trump-Musk Feud, CO2 Milestone Is the 'Important News of the Day'
Scientists said that atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations peaked above 430 parts per million for the first time in perhaps 30 million years.
Jun 06, 2025
The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere peaked above 430 parts per million in 2025—the highest it has been in millions of years—according to data released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego on Thursday.
The news was overshadowed by the explosive feud between U.S. President Donald Trump and his erstwhile backer Elon Musk, but climate activist Bill McKibben argued that it was ultimately more consequential.
"In the long run, this is actually going to be the important news of the day—CO2 in the atmosphere passes another grim milestone," McKibben wrote on social media.
In the long run, this is actually going to be the important news of the day--co2 in the atmosphere passes another grim milestone
[image or embed]
— Bill McKibben (@billmckibben.bsky.social) June 5, 2025 at 4:33 PM
Carbon dioxide has been accumulating in the atmosphere due primarily to the human burning of fossil fuels, as well as by the clearing of forests and other natural carbon sinks. There, it acts as a greenhouse gas, trapping heat from the Earth, and is the primary gas responsible for the rise of global temperatures by approximately 1.1°C from the 1850 -1900 average. This warming has already had a host of dramatic impacts, from extreme weather events to sea-level rise to polar ice melt, and scientists warn these impacts will only accelerate under current energy policies, which put the world on track for around 3°C of warming by 2100.
The last time that atmospheric CO2 concentrations topped 430 ppm was most likely more than 30 million years ago, Ralph Keeling, who directs the Scripps CO2 Program, told NBC News.
"It's changing so fast," he said. "If humans had evolved in such a high-CO2 world, there would probably be places where we wouldn't be living now. We probably could have adapted to such a world, but we built our society and a civilization around yesterday's climate."
"While largely symbolic, passing 430 ppm should be a wake-up call."
Scripps and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration both measure carbon dioxide levels from NOAA's Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, where Charles Keeling began taking measurements in 1958. As CO2 levels rise over time, they also follow a seasonal cycle—peaking in May before falling in the Northern Hemisphere summer and rising again in the fall.
This May, Scripps Oceanography calculated an average of 430.2 ppm for 2025, which is 3.5 ppm over the average for May 2024. NOAA's Global Monitoring Laboratory, meanwhile, calculated a monthly average of 430.5 ppm, a 3.6 ppm jump from the year before and the second-steepest yearly climb since 1958.
"Another year, another record," Keeling said in a statement. "It's sad."
The news comes two months after Mauna Loa daily measurements surpassed 430 ppm for the first time in March, which Plymouth Marine Laboratory professor Helen Findlay called "extremely disappointing and worrying."
"While largely symbolic, passing 430 ppm should be a wake-up call, especially given the accelerated response we are seeing of glaciers and ice sheets to current warming," Dr. James Kirkham, chief scientist of the Ambition on Melting Ice coalition of governments, said at the time.
"This upward trajectory is a direct result of continued fossil fuel use, likely exacerbated by emissions from extreme wildfires last year, methane leaks from fossil fuel extraction and possibly greater permafrost emissions, alongside decreased ability of very warm oceans to absorb CO2," Kirkham said.
The monthly record also comes a little more than a week after a United Nations report warned that there was a small chance global temperatures could surpass 2°C in at least 1 of the next 5 years, only a decade after world leaders pledged in the Paris agreement to keep global temperatures "well-below" that level.
"Carbon emissions are still rising, and the atmosphere is going to keep heating further until greenhouse gas concentrations stabilize," Matt Kean, who chairs Australia's Climate Change Authority, wrote in response to the Scripps and NOAA figures. "What sort of climate do we want to leave our children and those who come after them?"
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