Global warming on a local scale
THESSALONIKI – Heating systems could become a thing of the past within the next 60-70 years in some parts of Greece, if results of a recent study of the greenhouse effect prove to be correct. The same study predicts that air-conditioning systems are likely to become necessary features in homes for about 140 days of the year. Professor Christos Zerefos, director of Thessaloniki University’s atmospheric physics laboratory, said at a recent conference here that the results of the survey, which were compared to those for the period 1960-1990 and offered predictions for the next 80 years, indicate that increases in average temperatures and changes resulting from the greenhouse effect will bring about a 50-percent reduction in the use of central heating and a corresponding increase in the use of air conditioning. Zerefos, who is one of the scientists who ascribes to the view that the greenhouse effect is the cause of global warming – an issue on which not all scientists agree – often says that our summers will become hotter, with more frequent heat waves. At the conference, held at Thessaloniki University, Zerefos presented the results of the Acacia program carried out for the European Union and referred to more recent scientific developments concerning the greenhouse effect. «There has never been such a dramatic change as over the past 30-40 years,» he said. Scientists have linked the rise in greenhouse gases over the past century (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen oxides), which constitute 1 percent of atmospheric mass, to the higher frequency of extreme climatic phenomena such as extended droughts and major floods, and are trying to make forecasts. «Extreme weather phenomena are nothing new. But the fear now is that these extreme conditions might become all too familiar,» said Zerefos. An example is the El Nino phenomenon, which used to appear every 30 years but is now recurring every decade. It has not rained for three years in a stretch of territory from North Africa to Afghanistan. Parts of northwest Africa have been suffering from drought for 25 years. In Greece, there was a decrease in rainfall of over 50 percent during the period 1988-1992. As a result, more bores were sunk, resulting in salination of aquifers and subsidence in coastal areas such as the Gulf of Thessaloniki due to over-drilling for underground water. Zerefos called the Kyoto protocol, which aims to reduce activities that contribute to greenhouse gases, was only a «very small step in the right direction.» «Nature will force us to sign much stricter protocols,» he concluded.
