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With bursting thermometers, historic droughts and dozens of fires raging from Portugal to Greece, it isn't hard to imagine an apocalyptic future for southern Europe, almost as if the vast Sahara Desert were reaching out across the Mediterranean. Is this merely a long, hot summer, or are these the initial symptoms of enduring climate change, exacerbated by overpopulation and overdevelopment of a fragile ecological landscape? Evidence is mounting to support just such fears.
The Desert Watch project, led by the European Space Agency, reports that 300,000 square kilometers of Europe's Mediterranean coast—an area larger than Britain—with a population of 16.5 million, is threatened by "desertification." The Spanish minister of the Environment, Cristina Narbona, warned in June about a long-term decrease in rain and an increase in temperatures: "the beginning of a long cycle" of extreme drought. And while severe dry spells may be a normal component of —Europe's climate, says Jose Luis Rubio, the head of the University of Valencia's Desertification Investigation Center, a weakening of the soil's resistance to drought among other things, along with human factors, are enhancing the risks of desertification. "We have observed a growing fragility," says Rubio. In places like Valencia, "the water levels are dropping and the soil is weaker."
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Remember the killer summer heat wave of 2003, when thousands of elderly French died while their children vacationed on beaches? That was the most intense in the 150 years of accurate weather history. This year's baking drought hasn't brought the same record heat—as yet. But eying southern Europe's cloudless skies, it's hard to escape the sense that this is no climatic aberration. Before the end of the century, summer temperatures in Italy are expected to increase by 7 to 8 degrees Celsius, according to the international panel on climate change, the IPCC (which was established by the world meteorological organization and the U.N. environment program). Meteo France projects that in the latter part of this century, 35-degree Celsius days will be "five to ten times more numerous" across the country. The city of Nimes is expected to pass from four scorching days now to 40 by the latter part of this century (from the year 2070 onward), according to projections from Meteo France. Such changes would transform everything from natural ecosystems—which can change dramatically with a tiny temperature variation—to basic water supplies, agriculture and tourism. Rainfall is expected to decline by 15 percent on average and 40 percent in the scalding summers before the end of the century, according to the IPCC. Experts warn that sea levels could rise as glaciers melt, even affecting the Mediterranean. Warmer weather and changing climates could bring malaria to Europe. And in North Africa the situation will surely be worse, as governments have far fewer resources with which to prepare for the future, says Dieter Schoene, an environmental specialist at the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization. The result: even greater immigration pressure than exists today.
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The weather changes aren't just affecting the shores but the sea as well. Italy's Agency for Technology, Energy and the Environment concluded that its coastal ocean temperatures rose three degrees in the summer of 2003, a sharp spike highlighting a general trend. The Red Sea mullet, a warm-water native of the Suez Canal, has in recent years crossed into the Mediterranean and is now regularly sold in Italian fish markets. Other strange phenomena include the expanding reach of a 6,000-square-kilometer supercolony of Argentine ants that now stretches from Italy through France and Portugal to northwestern Spain. "Everything is linked to the changing climate," says Anne Rogers, senior economist at the U.N.'s Division for Sustainable Development. The uncertainty gives an ominous undercurrent to this year's summer holidays. By mid-July, temperatures in much of southern France were already between 32 and 37 degrees Celsius. All major French cities have announced Level Three alerts—Four is an emergency—automatically bolstering, among other things, hospital staffing to flu-epidemic levels. Memories of the deadly heat wave of 2003 give every reason to worry. Italy's national statistics office recently revised its 2003 summer death toll, from 8,000 to an astounding 20,000. Overall, the number of European deaths from the heat two years ago is believed to have surpassed 40,000.
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http://msnbc.msn.com/id/8770524/site/newsweek/
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