Potential Impact of the Greenhouse Effect on the Mediterranean Sea: Overview

Zavatarelli, M. (1988). Potential Impact of the Greenhouse Effect on the Mediterranean Sea: Overview. IIASA Working Paper. IIASA, Laxenburg, Austria: WP-88-076

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Abstract

One of the objectives of IIASA's Study, "The Future Environments for Europe: Some Implications of Alternative Development Paths", is to foresee long-term, broad-scale environmental transformations before they actually occur. Toward this goal, this paper focuses on the potential changes in the Mediterranean Sea owing to climatic change and chemical pollution. Hitherto, the Mediterranean Sea, especially the deeper, western half, has been relatively resilient to environmental changes. This is true in part, because of its great depth compared to, for example, the North and Baltic Seas, and in part because of the relatively low inputs from industrial wastes compared to the situation in northern Europe.

However, as explained by the author, plausible changes in climate may lead to large-scale environmental changes in the Mediterranean and the adjacent Adriatic Sea. Moreover, an expected rapid level of development on the southern coast of the Mediterranean, owing to population pressures and industrialization, could lead to increased inputs of chemical pollutants over and above those originating from development activities on the northern coast.

Finally, the author sets forth the possibility of utilizing the monitored changes in the Mediterranean Sea, sometimes defined as a "reduced scale ocean", for gaining insights into the physical and biological changes that may occur in the larger world ocean systems. Thus, this paper is relevant, not only to countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea, but also to more general concerns about responses of large marine systems to climatic change.

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