Warming may bring hurricanes to Mediterranean - Reuters

[Eugene]

Source: Reuters

Warming may bring hurricanes to Mediterranean
Mon Jul 16, 2007 6:05AM EDT

By Ben Hirschler

LONDON, July 16 (Reuters) - Global warming could trigger hurricanes,
or tropical cyclones, over the Mediterranean sea, threatening one of the
world's most densely populated coastal regions, according to European
scientists.

Hurricanes currently form out in the tropical Atlantic and rarely reach
Europe, but a new study shows a 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees
Fahrenheit) rise in average temperatures could set them off in the
enclosed Mediterranean in future.

"This is the first study to detect this possibility," lead researcher Miguel
Angel Gaertner of the University of Castilla-La Mancha in Toledo, Spain,
told Reuters on Monday.

-snip-

In a paper published in the American Geophysical Union Journal, Gaertner
and colleagues from the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg,
Germany, used a range of regional climate models to assess the chance of
similar events in the Mediterranean.

-snip-

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSL1666597920070716

[soothsayer]

1. bummer