Global warning blamed for wild weather

INCREASINGLY frequent storms, floods, droughts and other extreme weather battering Europe are consequences of global warming and other climatic changes, the European Environment Agency said yesterday.

Its report draws a grim picture of rising sea levels, melting glaciers in the Alps and deadly heat waves.

The report “underlines that strategies are needed, at European, regional, national and local levels to adapt to climate change,” said Jacqueline McGlade, the EEA’s executive director.

The climatic changes “will considerably affect our societies and environments for decades and centuries to come,” she said in a statement with the release of the report: Impacts of Europe’s Changing Climate.

Global warming is believed to be caused by human activities, particularly, emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.

The report singled out summer floods across Europe two years ago and last year’s summer heat wave in western and southern Europe as recent examples of how destructive extreme weather can be. More than 20,000 people died in the 2003 European heat wave.