Mediterranean is warming up faster than the rest of the planet, report warns
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The Mediterranean basin is one of the hot spots of this global crisis, and in some ways it is being “hit harder than other parts of the world,” according to Wolfgang Cramer, scientific director at the French-based Mediterranean Institute of Biodiversity and Ecology (IMBE).
A new report, whose main conclusions are being presented in Barcelona, shows that the temperature increase in the Mediterranean region has already reached 1.5ºC above pre-industrial levels, which means that the warming effect in this area is 20% faster than the global average.
If additional measures to reduce greenhouse gases are not taken, is much worse: by 2040 the temperature increase will be 2.2ºC, and possibly as much as 3.8ºC in some parts of the basin by 2100. In just two decades, 250 million people will suffer from water scarcity due to the droughts.
The report is being presented at a meeting of the Union for the Mediterranean, an international organization whose members include EU states as well as countries of the Southern and Eastern Mediterranean.
Since 2015, a group of over 80 scientists working under Cramer’s guidance has been working on a study that is being touted as “the first-ever comprehensive scientific report on the impact of climate and environmental change in the Mediterranean region.”
