Rising Sea Levels Threaten Pacific Atolls, Scientists Say

Rising sea levels caused by the world’s warming will have catastrophic effects on many small Pacific islands, and some may vanish underwater, an international congress of scientists was told Monday.

Scientists attending the 26th Congress of the International Geographic Union were told that global warming, a product of the so-called greenhouse effect, will cause sea levels to rise by more than 3 feet within a century.

The rising seas will swamp low-lying coral atolls such as Kiribati--formerly the Gilbert Islands--and Tuvalu, according to a paper presented by Peter Roy and John Connell of Australia’s Department of Mineral Resources and Sydney University’s Department of Geography, respectively. The two atolls have a combined population of about 68,000.