Rising seas 'worldwide catastrophe' affecting Pacific paradises: UN chief

Highlighting seas that are rising at an accelerating rate, especially in the far more vulnerable Pacific island nations, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres issued yet another climate SOS to the world. This time he said those initials stand for save our seas.

The United Nations and the World Meteorological Organization Monday issued reports on worsening sea level rise, turbocharged by a warming Earth and melting ice sheets and glaciers. They highlight how the Southwestern Pacific is not only hurt by the rising oceans, but by other climate change effects of ocean acidification and marine heat waves.

Guterres toured Samoa and Tonga and made his climate plea from Tonga's capital on Tuesday at a meeting of the Pacific Islands Forum, whose member countries are among those most imperiled by climate change.

This is a crazy situation, Guterres said. Rising seas are a crisis entirely of humanity's making. A crisis that will soon swell to an almost unimaginable scale, with no ..