Climate Change Preliminary Results of the South Pacific Sea Level and Climate Monitoring Project and Its Capacity Building Program Than Aung and Awnesh Singh* Physics Division, Faculty of Science and Technology, University of the South Pacific, Fiji INTRODUCTION Many of the legends of the great deluge that have come down from the past are based on the occurrence of a great flood that swept the land. The Greeks explained this great flood as the work of Zeus, chief of the Olympian gods. According to Hindus, great havoc was wrought by a deluge that inundated the coasts and carried thousands to their deaths. A similar record is found in the Book of Genesis and the story of Noah and the Ark is one of the best known stories in the Bible. It is to be noted that other ancient civilizations, e.g., the Sumerians and Babylonians, had similar stories. Many others are known from divergent sources. Most of these accounts are identical in many respects, although they are told by people of varying cultures, from different parts of the world. 1 Many, especially in the Pacific region see it as corroboration that indeed all people on Earth were descendants of Noah and his sons. For example, excavations at Ur in Iraq show that the Flood recorded in The Bible may have been a flood that *Editors’Note.—The authors would like to acknowledge AusAID for sponsoring and fully funding the South Pacific Sea Level and Climate Monitoring Project as an Australian contribution to the Pacific region on the climate change and sea level issue. Many thanks are due to Mr. Steve Turner of the Lands and Survey Department in Adelaide for his surveying data and land movement values. Information from the Monthly Data Reports and Quarterly Newsletters of the South Pacific Sea Level and Climate Monitoring Project is also used in this article. 1. D.A. Ross, Introduction to Oceanography (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall Inc., 3d ed. 1982): Chapter 9. Ocean Yearbook 21: 69–89. 69