Regional IPCC Projections untill 2100 in the Mediterranean Area

Abstract

Over the last forty years much evidence has been accumulated as to how human activities can ultimately affect the global climate of our planet. However the extreme complexity of the Earth's climate system makes it very complicated to accurately analyse the importance of the induced climate alterations and the impact that they in turn could eventually have on the different ecosystems in the planet. One thing which is now a certainty is that the problem has a global dimension, and as a consequence, all the countries of the world must be involved in its solution. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, known by its acronym IPCC, is the key international body which has been established to assess the global climate change problem. It was founded in 1988 and at its first meeting held in November of that year in Geneva it decided to ask the scientific community for a report in which scientific facts on the global warming were established. In this manner politicians could be provided with a solid scientific base from which the requirements for action were developed. The IPCC is made up of three working groups (WG), each formed by hundreds of scientists, which deal respectively with the science of climate change itself (WG I), the impacts of climate change (WGII), and response strategies (WG III). The first IPCC assessment report from these three working groups was launched in May 1990. This was the key input to the international negotiations leading the way to prepare the agenda for the United Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, where more than 160 countries signed the Framework Convention on Climate Change. Since this date the IPCC working groups have released diverse technical reports and two additional assessment reports, the last of which was published in the year 2001 [5]. Some of the results obtained by the IPCC WG1 on climate change projections through the 21st century in the Mediterranean region are presented in this article. With these future climate scenarios it would be possible to estimate some of the impacts of global climate change in the region and to elaborate response strategies focused on adaptation and mitigation of its socio- economic consequences.