Balearics at the mercy of global warming

Last year January 22 was the coldest day of 2000, the day before yesterday in the Balearics, was one of the mildest days this year with people strolling around in T-shirts and experts warned yesterday that the Mediterreanan will be one of the regions to be worst hit at the hands of global warming. The earth's atmosphere is warming faster than expected, evidence is mounting that humans are to blame and tens of millions of people may be forced from low-lying areas as seas rise, the U.N. said yesterday and the worst drought of the past 100 years to have hit the Balearics, is not forecast to release its grip on the region. “We see changes in climate, we believe we humans are involved and we're projecting future climate changes much more significant over the next 100 years than the last 100 years,” said Robert Watson of the U.N.*s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. A warmer climate would raise sea levels as ice caps recede and could force tens of millions of people to flee low lying areas all across the globe, but closer to home Mediterranean islands such as the Balearics and the Greek Islands will not only have to fight back rising sea levels, but also temperatures are forecast to rise to such an extent that sunbathing will become nearly impossible. The report projects the earth's average surface temperature will rise 1.4 to 5.8 degrees Celsius (2.5 to 10.4 degrees Fahrenheit) between 1990 and 2100, higher than its 1995 estimate of a one to 3.5 degree C rise (1.8 to 6.3 degrees F). Sea levels were likely to rise between nine and 88 cm (3.54 and 34.64 inches) over the same period, it said. “The decade of the 1990s was the hottest decade of the last century and the warming in this century is warmer than anything in the last 1'000 years in the Northern Hemisphere,” Watson said. The earth's temperature had already risen 0.6 degrees C (1.08 degrees F) over the last 100 years and it has seen more floods and droughts around the world in the last decade.