CLIMATE CHANGE POSES NEW CHALLENGES FOR EU

Climate impact assessment report for the European Union

LONDON - Northern Europe and Britain can expect more flooding and torrential rains in the years to come but southern Europe will bear the brunt of the impact of global warming with water shortages, forest fires and desertification.

As many parts of Europe were still recovering from recent mudslides, floods and heavy rains, scientists predicted yesterday that it is just the start of extreme weather changes that will intensify in the future.

In the first climate impact assessment report for the European Union (EU), scientists said that summers will become drier in southern Europe and winters will be wetter in the north.

Hot summers will double in frequency by 2020 and increase five-fold in southern Spain, while cold winters will be half as frequent in 20 years and non-existent by 2080.

The report said annual temperatures will rise at a rate of 0.1-0.4 degree Centigrade each decade and aggravate current environmental problems.

"The hand of climate change will tend to expand the current changes in Europe," Martin Parry, the editor of the report, told a news conference.

"There will be a south-to-north shift of climatic resources (temperature, water and sunshine) across Europe," the professor at the University of East Anglia in England added.

Climate change is happening now

The negative impact of climate change will be felt most in rural areas of southern and eastern Europe which will warm at twice the rate of northern Europe, according to the report.

Increased temperatures in the south will cause water shortages, heatwaves, droughts, erosion and air pollution in cities. Soaring temperatures could make southern European beaches too hot for tourists.

In the north, alpine glaciers will retreat and could disappear by the end of the 21st century.

Salmon and sturgeon may no longer be able to survive at the edges of their current range in Europe and rising sea levels could lead to the extinction of some species.

The report, which was written by 30 scientists and funded by the EU, is Europe's input to the United Nations-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that is due to be published next summer.

Parry said the report's release, two weeks before a major conference on climate change in the Netherlands to reduce greenhouse gases along the lines of the Kyoto Protocol and in the wake of flooding in many parts of Europe, is timely.

The Kyoto Protocol which was signed in 1997 legally obliges Western nations to cut emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) to 5.2 percent below 1990 levels between 2008 and 2012.

Adaptation and mitigation

Along with its predictions, the report offered recommendations. It said reducing greenhouse gas emissions and altering activities to avoid or minimise the consequences of climate change would be the best approach.

"There should be two strings to the bow - mitigation and adaptation," said Parry.

But he added that mitigation alone is not enough because the Kyoto agreement will only reduce the rise of 1-2 degrees C in temperature by 2050 by around 0.06 degrees C.

The report also called for revisions in EU policies in agriculture, fisheries and regional development to take account of climate change.

Story by Patricia Reaney, taken from Planetark, Reuters Environmental News service

| top |