PAG Insight Lab

Climate Change in the Pacific

Timeline evidence
Annual snapshot
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Selected-year evidence.

The latest timeline year is summarised here in plain language.

1. Global Driver Heat-trapping emissions

Global Greenhouse Gases

World total

Annual emissions across four income groups

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Why it sits beside the Pacific story The region contributes a very small share of global emissions, yet experiences the effects of a warming atmosphere and ocean.
Current Year
2000
Selected year at a glance 2000

Regional conditions are shown as a connected story from climate drivers to ecosystem impacts.

Atmosphere

Global GHG emissions 40.80 Gt CO₂e; air temperature anomaly +0.2°C vs the 1971–2000 mean.

Ocean, rain & coast

Sea-surface temperature +0.17°C; rainfall anomaly -4.7 mm; sea-level anomaly +3.3 cm; reported affected persons N/A.

Food systems

Samoa crop yield: 6.07 t/ha.

Survival Index

0.81; lower values mean greater extinction pressure.

Baseline year: compare this year with the highlighted anomaly years on the timeline.

Hover a chart
Interactive Link: Hover or tap a chart card to highlight the matching part of the island simulator.
2. Climate Signals & Impacts Ocean + Atmosphere + Island Outcomes

Sea Temperature

Regional mean

Ocean anomaly (°C)

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Warmer seas stress reefs and fisheries.

Air Temperature

Regional mean

Air anomaly (°C)

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Heat pressure reaches land and ocean.

Rainfall

22-place mean

Rainfall anomaly (mm)

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Too little or too much rain disrupts islands.

Disasters

Reported total

People directly affected

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Crop Yield

Samoa

Aggregate yield (t/ha)

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Declined 33% since 2000

Survival Index

Regional mean

1 = No species at risk

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A Shoreline in Motion: Funafuti

Official Landsat island outlines and horizontal shoreline-change rates around Tuvalu's capital atoll.

Funafuti annual shorelines and local shoreline change rates Map comparing official 2000 and 2023 annual shoreline vectors. Closed 2023 shoreline polygons are filled to show the mapped island shapes. Red points indicate measured local retreat and teal points indicate measured local growth among good-certainty statistically significant observations. Rates are horizontal shoreline movement in metres per year, not vertical sea-level rise.
Inspect the coast Select a red or teal point to inspect its horizontal shoreline movement in metres per year.
Read the metres

Coast movement and water height are different measurements.

Funafuti mean elevation 1.48 m Above mean sea level in recent nationwide LiDAR.
Sea-level scale example 0.10 m = 10 cm Vertical sea-surface anomaly; coastal water levels also include tides, waves and surge.

The map's m/year values measure the shoreline moving horizontally. They are not a vertical rise in water level and should not be subtracted from land elevation.

Why not lead with 4.6 m? A 2015 UNDP summary cited 4.6 m nationally and 4 m for Funafuti. New LiDAR identifies isolated higher points, many shaped by human activity; the 1.48 m Funafuti mean better represents broad exposure.
2024 Tuvalu LiDAR study 2015 UNDP summary
Global emissions, local exposure

A tiny regional contribution sits beside a very local exposure.

54.43 Gt CO₂e 2024 world total represented by the four income groups
0.046% Pacific contribution to global emissions in 2024

The attached file contains total CO₂ emissions by income group. Pacific nations together contribute less than 0.05% of global emissions, with Tuvalu contributing only 20,000 of the 54 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases emitted in 2024.

Jones et al. (2025), via Our World in Data

Deep Dive: Live Data Relationships

These annual panels overlay the Pacific regional datasets by year. Scrub the timeline or select a key event below it to see the evidence, context, and limits of each relationship.

Data and methodology
Official-data method: The overview's global greenhouse-gas card sums the four annual income-group totals in the attached emissions file. Pacific per-capita greenhouse-gas emissions in the deep dive are population weighted: each geography's per-capita emissions are multiplied by its population, the resulting emissions are summed, and that total is divided by the summed population for the same 17 covered geographies. The atmospheric deep-dive line shows this Pacific per-capita series; the bars show the regional surface-temperature anomaly. Regional temperature, sea-level, SST, rainfall, and Red List values are unweighted annual means across available Pacific rows; the overview rainfall card uses the 22 geographies represented in the official rainfall file. Surface-temperature anomaly measures air temperature 2 metres above the surface relative to the 1971–2000 baseline mean. Sea-level anomaly is the difference between observed sea-surface height and the 1993–2012 long-term mean; source values in metres are multiplied by 100 for display in centimetres. Funafuti shoreline rates are horizontal movement in metres per year, estimated by regressing annual shoreline position against time; their standard errors use the same metres-per-year unit. They are not measurements of vertical sea-level rise. Funafuti's 1.48 m mean elevation comes from recent nationwide LiDAR referenced to mean sea level. The four global income-group series sum to 40.80 Gt CO2e in 2000 and 54.43 Gt in 2024 (+33.4%), with year-to-year variation. This global context is not used to attribute a specific change in Tuvalu. Disaster values sum the available reported rows. The food-system card shows Samoa's official annual aggregate Crop Yield indicator, converted from kilograms per hectare to tonnes per hectare. The Samoa bars show crop yield and the line shows precipitation anomaly. Missing source years display N/A; charts do not interpolate or carry observations forward. The illustrative SVG alone retains the latest prior official visual state when a selected year is unavailable. Highlighted key years are dashboard selections based on extrema or notable co-occurring values, not classifications supplied by the source files. Environmental explanations describe plausible mechanisms; the charts show association, not causal attribution. Downloaded files: 04 greenhouse gas emissions per capita; SPC NMDI population workbook; attached total-ghg-emissions.csv (global income-group totals); attached samoa_crop.xlsx (Samoa Crop Yield in kg/ha and Precipitation anomalies in mm); 09 mean sea-surface temperature anomalies; 10 mean surface temperature anomalies; 11 rainfall anomalies; 13 sea-level anomalies; 16 Red List Index; 17 directly affected persons attributed to disasters; 20 renewable energy share; 22 power generation; 27 Annual Shorelines (Landsat, 30 m). Samoa crop yield and precipitation: Paired comparisons use the complete 2000–2024 overlap from the attached official workbook. Crop Yield is a Samoa-wide aggregate, not a named crop; source kg/ha values are divided by 1,000 for display as t/ha. Yield falls from 6.07 t/ha in 2000 to 4.06 t/ha in 2024, with a sharp break from 6.06 in 2014 to 4.32 in 2015. Precipitation anomaly is shown as context. Their weak same-year and year-to-year linear relationships do not support attributing the yield shift to rainfall alone. Funafuti shoreline map: The map overlays the official 2000 and 2023 annual shoreline vectors. Closed 2023 shoreline polygons are filled to show the mapped island shapes; no satellite basemap or inferred land boundary is added. The whole-atoll view samples every fourth good-certainty rate-of-change point with p ≤ 0.05, while the selected-coast detail restores nearby observations. Negative rates indicate local retreat and positive rates indicate local growth. Satellite-observed shoreline movement is not a direct measure of island habitability or proof that sea-level rise caused a specific local change. Contribution series: Pacific share of global annual emissions is calculated as Pacific annual emissions divided by global annual emissions, multiplied by 100, using the supplied pacific_perc_greenhous.csv file. It is a total-emissions measure, not a per-capita measure, and is not included in the atmospheric correlation statistics. Energy-system pathway: Renewable share is the unweighted annual mean across 20 available Pacific geographies for 2000-2022; the 2023 value is suppressed because only one geography is present. Power generation sums the 18 consistently represented geographies for 2000-2023. These annual values describe the energy system but are excluded from the atmospheric correlation statistics. The pathway arrows summarize the established climate mechanism; they are not a same-year causal estimate. Disaster context: Country contribution bars reproduce the non-zero observations in downloaded challenge file 17. The file contains annual country totals but no hazard or event-name field. Named events for 2016, 2018 and 2020 are a separately sourced context layer; their figures use different definitions and revisions and are not expected to reconcile exactly with the challenge aggregates. Featured species context: The Pacific sheath-tailed bat case uses external IUCN, USGS and USFWS evidence to illustrate a climate-to-extinction pathway. It is not annual timeline evidence, is not used in the regional Red List Index calculation, and is not asserted to be included in that aggregate. Palau spotlight: The selected-year strip shows all 17 country and territory per-capita observations for 2000-2024 on a logarithmic axis. The comparison below it shows the population-weighted Pacific average with and without Palau. This describes per-capita intensity and must not be interpreted as a ranking of total emissions. Sensitivity checks: The atmospheric comparison recalculates Pearson's r and R-squared using the same annual temperature series first with the population-weighted Pacific GHG average and then with the weighted average excluding Palau. The marine comparison reports raw annual levels, first differences between consecutive years, and residuals after removing separate linear time trends from SST and the Survival Index. These checks test whether the headline association survives a reasonable change in aggregation or treatment of time.

Atmospheric Drivers

The line shows population-weighted greenhouse-gas emissions per Pacific resident.

Official driver pathway From the energy system to warming pressure

2000 | mechanism, not same-year causality
Stage 1
Energy system
Reported power--
Renewable share--

Demand and the energy source together shape emissions pressure.

shapes emissions
Stage 2
GHG emissions
Pacific per capita--
Global contribution--

The Pacific share is small, but every source adds to the global total.

accumulates globally
Stage 3
Regional warming signal
Surface-temperature anomaly--

Annual Pacific anomalies reflect global warming plus regional variability.

How to read the arrows: they show the physical pathway, not proof that one year's Pacific energy use caused that same year's temperature anomaly. Warming responds to accumulated global emissions.

Temperature Stress & Biodiversity

Positive sea-surface temperature anomalies indicate conditions above the reference baseline.

Temperature stress (°C) Survival Index (Red List)

Precipitation & Crop Yield in Samoa

Samoa's aggregate crop yield viewed beside its annual precipitation anomaly.

Crop yield bars (t/ha) Precipitation line (mm)
2000
2025