When the sea began to crawl inland, Paurata tribe leader Sirilo Sutaroti and his village scrambled to the hilltop to rebuild their homes.
Sutaroti, 94, recalled to a group of Australian scientists what transpired when rising sea levels in the Pacific claimed the shorelines to the northeast of Australia -- the Solomon Islands. At least five of these islands have been swallowed by the swollen sea, while six islands have been terribly eroded.
What was the culprit? A new study suggests that anthropogenic or human-induced climate change may be to blame for the destructive sea level rise and coastal erosion.
A Lost Home
Civil engineer Simon Albert of the University of Queensland, Australia says coastal villages such as the one where Sutaroti and his tribe used to live have now scattered and reformed on higher ground.
On Nuatumbu island, home to 25 families, the rising sea has claimed about 11 houses. Twelve more houses remain, says Albert. The families that had left the island have moved to the nearby Choiseul island.
The Solomon Islands, which make up six main islands and almost a thousand others, is one of the least populated island nations in the Pacific. Despite the low number of population, settling into a safe place to call home has become difficult for islanders.
Albert says there are large volcanic islands where residents can transfer to, but relocations can be filled with tension.
Majority of the islands are controlled by traditional owners, so moving a tribe to others' lands could be a source of ethnic conflict, he says.
In the end, many islanders remain on Nuatumbu. They would like to leave, but cannot afford to do so.
Rising Sea Levels
Albert and his colleagues concretely linked the loss of the Solomon Island shoreline to global warming -- a study that is now considered the first of its kind.
The team examined satellite and aerial imagery from 1947 to 2015, spanning 68 years of data. Backed up by local knowledge and the carbon dating of trees, the researchers assessed shoreline changes across 33 low-lying islands.
Some of the lost Solomon Islands were at least 300 years old, scientists found. The five lost islands were 1 to 5 hectares and used to be the site of tropical vegetation.
Past studies suggest that the changes in shoreline were caused by extreme events, seawalls, and inapt coastal development rather than rising sea levels alone.
Albert says factors that cause island erosion could be masked by hurricanes, waves, plate tectonics, and human disturbances.
But the new study asserts that the loss of islands were directly the result of phenomena caused by higher sea levels and other changes in climate. Researchers say the islands they studied were not inhabited by humans, with Nuatambu as the notable exception.
Areas around the Solomon Islands have been experiencing increasing sea levels at around 7 to 10 millimeters a year, which is more than double the global average of 3 millimeters per year.
The research team concentrated their mapping where the waves were strongest. All through the time that sea level has been rising, severe flooding also came upon the Solomon Islands.
In April 2014, a flood caused a total of 31 deaths. When intense rain poured into the riverbanks, 21 lives were lost, while 10 children were found dead in the aftermath due to diarrhea.
But there is a glimmer of hope: scientists say that although sea level rise around Solomon Islands has spiked dramatically, this trend may not continue.
"In the short term, things may stabilize," says Albert.
Still, the sea level rise seen in the Solomon Islands might occur globally in the second half of the 21st century, he says. It could be that the sunken islands foreshadow what would inevitably come.
The findings of the study are detailed in the journal Environmental Research Letters.
Photo: Luigi Guarino | Flickr
