WESTERN Europe may actually get colder as a result of global warming, because
the melting Arctic ice cap is cooling off the warm ocean current that is largely
responsible for Europe's mild weather, scientists and environmentalists said
today.
If the ice cap in Greenland and the Arctic continued to melt at its current
rate, Europe's temperatures would take a sharp dip after five or more decades of
increasingly warm weather.
That turnaround could spell trouble for regions that by then would have adapted
to more tropical conditions, the experts told reporters at a UN climate change
conference in Milan.
"To mitigate the advancement, the increase, the acceleration of that warming, we
would need to take really radical steps, far more extreme than the Kyoto
Protocol on global warming is proposing," said Jonathan Bamber of the University
of Bristol.
Mr Bamber said increased influxes of water from the Arctic could trigger a
slowdown or diversion of the Gulf Stream, the current that sweeps warm water
from the Gulf of Mexico up to the North Atlantic, warming the waters and climate
of Western Europe.
He also said that in the next five years, Europe could expect increasingly
hazardous conditions in the Alps.
Last summer was the first time that the Matterhorn and Mont Blanc were closed
for fear of rocks loosened by melted ice and snow.
And during Europe's record heat wave this summer, 10 per cent of the "permanent"
ice in the Italian Alps melted away, said Damiano Di Simine, president of the
Italian chapter of the International Commission for the Protection of the Alps.
He said that 1.5 billion cubic metres of fresh water had been lost, a resource
critical to northern Italy's water-intensive crops, such as rice.
"But every year we lose large quotas of water, between 5 and 10 per cent of the
Alpine ice, so within about 20 or 30 years, we'll lose it all.
Earlier this week, the United Nations Environment Program issued a report saying
that global warming was threatening the world's ski resorts, with melting snow
at lower altitudes forcing the sport to move higher and higher up mountains, and
threatening to make downhill skiing disappear altogether at some resorts.
Despite the grim prognosis, panelist Bill Hare, climate policy director of
Greenpeace International, cited European efforts to reduce greenhouse emissions
as significant progress toward implementing policies and technologies to slow
climate change.
The Kyoto treaty calls for countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions,
which are blamed for global warming.
The UN conference is grappling with the possibility that the pact might never
come into force because the United States has rejected it and Russia has not
ratified it.
"The hardest and most fundamental problem to be overcome is the US at present,"
Mr Hare said.
"And unless and until the US starts to move, everyone else will be that much
slower."