Friday, February 24, 2012

Vietnam faces rising temperature risk

Nam Pham in Viet Nam News: The Meteorology Office/Hadley Centre, the UK's foremost climate change research facility, yesterday warned Viet Nam of a four degrees Celsius temperature rise at a climate change conference held by British Council in the capital.

The warning came in accordance with the centre's new "4 Degree Map" launched at the conference, which shows the potential impact of global warming in South East Asia and Viet Nam.

"Negative impacts may occur in Viet Nam and other South East Asian countries due to rising global warming," according to Chris Gordon, head of the Science Partnership at the UK Meteorology Office/Hadley Centre.

He added that if Viet Nam took no action, there would be a four degrees Celsius temperature increase, causing a 65 cm rise in the sea-level and the shrinking of many coastal regions, especially in the low-lying Mekong Delta. "Around half of the delta will be shrunk", Gordon said.

Such a sea-level rise would totally submerge the lowest parts of the delta with up to 13 per cent (5,100 sq meter) of land mass disappearing, doing significant damage to the annual 4.7 tonnes rice economy....

No comments: