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September 07, 2004
EEA report: 'Impacts of Europe's changing climate'
A detailed report about climate change was published by the European Environmental Agency on 18 August, entitled ‘Impacts of Europe’s changing climate’.
From the press release:
“More frequent and more economically costly storms, floods, droughts and other extreme weather. Wetter conditions in northern Europe but drier weather in the south that could threaten agriculture in some areas. More frequent and more intense heatwaves, posing a lethal threat to the elderly and frail. Melting glaciers, with three-quarters of those in the Swiss Alps likely to disappear by 2050. Rising sea levels for centuries to come. These are among the impacts of global climate change that are already being seen in Europe or are projected to happen over the coming decades as global temperatures rise… .
The extent and rate of the climate changes under way most likely exceed all natural variation in climate over the last thousand years and possibly longer. The 1990s were the warmest decade on record and the three hottest years recorded - 1998, 2002 and 2003 - have occurred in the last six years. The global warming rate is now almost 0.2 °C per decade.
Europe is warming faster than the global average. The temperature in Europe has risen by an average of 0.95 °C in the last hundred years and is projected to climb by a further 2.0-6.3 °C this century as emissions of greenhouse gases continue building up.”
There is a lot of important (and rather scary) data in this report - not least about the warming of the North Sea - and I’ll be returning to look at sections of it again later.
org.eea.eu.int/documents/newsreleases/climate_report-en
Posted by Simon Holledge at September 7, 2004 05:02 PM