2007-09-25

Mediterranean to become saltier?

It seems that climate change may turn the Mediterranean into a defacto endorheic basin, which means that the sea may become saltier:
Climate change is affecting Europe faster than the rest of the world and rising temperatures could transform the Mediterranean into a salty and stagnant sea, Italian experts said Wednesday.

Warmer waters and increased salinity could doom many of the sea's plant and animal species and ravage the fishing industry, warned participants at a two-day climate change conference that brought together some 2,000 scientists and officials in Rome.

"Europe and the Mediterranean are warming up faster than the rest of the world," said climatologist Filippo Giorgi. "It's a climate change hot spot, one of the areas where we actually see the change happening."

Scientists still don't know why the region is more sensitive to climate change, but Giorgi said that in the next decades, temperature increases hitting Europe during the summer months could be 40 percent to 50 percent higher than elsewhere.
Whenever a body of water has more inflow than outflow (due to increased evaporation) then it is only natural that higher salinity results. The Black Sea is saltier than the Mediterranean precisely because it is endorheic.

One advantage that the Mediterranean has is that it has two places where seawater enters - Gibraltar and Suez. This means that, due to the Suez canal, things may not become as bad as they could possibly get. Moreover, since the water entering the Mediterranean travels in one direction, it could be possible to create a hydro-power scheme along the Suez.

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