Environmental issues in the Philippines saw its average temperature rise by 0.65 degrees Celsius, with fewer recorded cold nights and more hot days. Since the 1970s, the number of typhoons during the "El Niño" season has increased. The Philippines has not only seen 0.15 meters of sea level rise since 1940, but also seen 0.6 to 1 degree Celsius increase in sea surface temperatures since 1910, and 0.09 degree c increase in ocean temperatures since 1950. During the time period from 1990 to 2006, the Philippines experienced a number of record-breaking weather events, including the strongest typhoon (wind speeds), the most destructive typhoons (damages), the
Geology of the Pacific Ocean Plate in the north, the Cocos Plate off today's Central America, and the Nazca and Phoenix Plates in the southern Pacific. Charles Darwin had proposed a theory of the slow subsidence of the ocean floor based on his studies of Pacific oceanic islands, seamounts (underwater volcanoes) and guyots (flat-topped seamounts). His observations have been verified and expanded in the development of plate tectonic theory. The tectonic plates continue to move today. The slowest ridge spreading rate is across the Gakkel Ridge in the Arctic Ocean which separates at less than 2.5 cm/yr while the fastest, across the East Pacific Rise