Half Of Planet's Forests On Track For Destruction By Warming By 2100 - SMH

[hatrack]

MORE than half the world's biggest forests will be lost if global temperatures rise by an average of 3 degrees or more, by the end of the century. The prediction comes from the most comprehensive analysis yet of the potential effects of human-made global warming.

Extreme floods, forest fires and droughts will also become more common over the next 200 years as global temperatures rise owing to climate change, says Marko Scholze, of the University of Bristol in the west of England.

Dr Scholze took 52 simulations of the world's climate over the next century, grouping the results according to varying amounts of global warming they predicted by 2100: less than 2 degrees, 2-3 degrees, and more than 3 degrees. He then used the simulations to work out how the world's plants would be affected over the next few hundred years. The results were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Dr Scholze said the effects of a 2 degree rise were inevitable, and in this scenario Europe, Asia, Canada, Central America and Amazonia could lose up to 30 per cent of their forests. A rise of 2-3 degrees will mean less fresh water available in parts of west Africa, Central America, southern Europe and the eastern US, raising the probability of drought in these areas. In contrast, the tropical parts of Africa and South America will be at greater risk of flooding as trees are lost.

EDIT

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2006/08/15/1155407810559.html

[NEOBuckeye]

1. The Bush Legacy n/t

[NNadir]

2. I would have guessed more. It seems that so many forests are burning

already.

It seems counter-intuitive that it would take as much as a century to lose half of them.