PARIS (AFP) - Global warming will hit Europe hard but unevenly this century, causing drought, reduced harvests and deadly heatwaves in the south but inflicting more floods and severe winter storms farther north, UN experts say in a report to be unveiled next week. ki industry while rising temperatures could wipe out up to 60 percent of plant and animal species, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warns.
The continent has already had a foretaste of its likely future: this winter was the warmest on record in many European countries, as have been 11 of the past 12 years.
The report, which deals with the impacts of global warming, is the second in a three-volume review of the evidence for climate change, the first since 2001.
A final draft of the 1,400-page document obtained by AFP says that even if dramatic measures are taken to reduce the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions that drive warming, temperatures worldwide will continue to climb for decades to come, unleashing unwelcome changes across the planet.
And if nothing at all is done to mitigate climate change, the impact in some regions could be catastrophic by century's end.
By 2080, the report says, it is likely that 1.1 to 3.2 billion people worldwide will experience water scarcity, 200 to 600 million will suffer from hunger, and each year, an additional two to seven million people will be victims of coastal flooding.
The human toll will be heaviest, experts say, in Africa and Asia, where hundreds of millions in low-lying "mega-river deltas" are threatened by rising sea levels, and tens of millions more by the spread of infectious disease.
As for Europe, some regions will likewise be severely challenged but overall the continent is somewhat less vulnerable -- and better able to adapt -- than poorer counterparts.
In the short term, if global temperatures rise no more than 2 C (3.6 F) compared to 1990 levels -- the maximum rise set by expanding forests.
But as the 21st century unfolds, those benefits are very likely to be swamped by the negative impact of warming.
Under almost any scenario, a swathe of Mediterranean countries including Spain, France, Italy and Greece faces a panoply of problems.
They include more frequent heatwaves of the kind that in 2003 killed tens of thousands of elderly people; damage to the tourism industry increased forest fires; and a fall of up to a third in fresh water availability, depending again on temperature rise.
Wintertime floods are likely to increase in Europe's maritime regions, while snowmelt-related floods and flashfloods will hit central Europe.
Europe has the resources to protect human life from the brunt of global warming onslaught, but its biodiversity will be badly affected.
"A large percentage of the European flora is likely to become vulnerable, endangered, or committed to extinction by the end of this century," says the draft.
In the first volume of its report, issued in February, the IPCC predicted world temperatures would rise by 1.8 C to 4.0 C (3.2-7.2 F) by 2100, depending on how much greenhouse gas is emitted into the atmosphere. A third volume, issued at the end of April, will look at ways of reducing those emissions.
In the Brussels meeting, the second volume will be issued on Friday after delegates hammer out a "summary for policy makers," distilling in a couple of dozen pages their most important findings.
Some participants complain that the summary, as currently written, does not adequately highlight the fact that those least able to adapt -- poor people -- will be the hardest hit.
"We in the northern hemisphere can adapt to heatwaves, but that is a very selfish notion," commented French scientist and IPCC executive committee member Jean Jouzel.
The draft summary concludes that global warming is "unequivocal," that human activity is the main driver, and that "changes in climate are now affecting physical and biological systems on every continent."
Across the planet, 20 to 30 percent of animal and plant species face extinction if temperatures rise 1.5 C to 2.5 C (2.7 F to 4.5 F).
Increases greater than 4 C (7.2 F) above 1990-2000 levels would lead to "major increases in vulnerability" that would exceed "the adaptive capacity of many systems," the report says.
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