COPENHAGEN - The middle of Europe could become crowded by "climate change refugees" escaping a thawing Arctic to the north and Mediterranean droughts to the south, the head of the European Environment Agency (EEA) said on Friday.
Indigenous peoples in the Arctic say global warming is a threat to their culture because it melts the ice on which their hunts of seals or polar bears depend. And some scientific models indicate southern Europe may get drier.
"I do see even within the confines of Europe from the Mediterranean to the Arctic there is enough momentum to consider we will have 'climate change refugees'," said Jacqueline McGlade, executive director of the EEA, an arm of the European Union.
"The difficulties are going to be when the northern people are moving away because permafrost (hard-frozen ground) is melting and southern people are moving up because of drought. They (are) all going to end up in the middle," she told a news conference.
The panel of scientists that advises the United Nations projects world temperatures are likely to rise by 1.4 to 5.8C (2.5 to 10.5F) by 2100, triggering more frequent floods, droughts, melting icecaps and driving thousands of species to extinction.
Many scientists say emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide from cars, power plants and factories are mainly to blame for blanketing the planet and nudging up temperatures. Others say models are unreliable and exaggerate the effects.
McGlade said a warming climate might discourage people from living or retiring by the Mediterranean.
"If in the next 20 to 30 years those conditions around the Mediterranean are going to move towards an extreme with drought and lack of water, will people then retire to such countries?" she asked.
She said people already living in those areas might also migrate northwards when that started to happen.
A report last year by 250 experts said climate change was happening fastest in the Arctic, partly because dark soil or water, once exposed, soaks up far more heat than snow or ice. (Additional reporting by Alister Doyle in Oslo)
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