Climate change: Mediterranean ecosystems will change to a state unprecedented in the past
“The Med is very sensitive to climatic change, maybe much more than any other region in the world,”
(Joel Guiot, Aix-Marseille University)
Southern Spain will be reduced to desert by the end of the century if the current rate of greenhouse gas emissions continue unchecked, researchers have warned.
Anything less than extremely ambitious and politically unlikely carbon emissions cuts will see ecosystems in the Mediterranean change to a state unprecedented in the past 10 millennia, they said.
The study, published in the journal Science, modelled what would happen to vegetation in the Mediterranean basin under four different paths of future carbon emissions, from a business-as-usual scenario at the worst end to keeping temperature rises below the Paris climate deal target of 1.5C at the other.
Read the full article by Adam Vaughan via the Guardian.
[Photo by Jorge Franganillo | flickr]
