Expert warns against global warming’s impact on Turkey
By Vugar Khalilov
The Director of Bogazichi University Climate Policy Research Center, Levent Kurnaz, has warned against the global warming in an interview with Turkish media on August 11.
Commenting on The United Nations' recent global warming report, Kurnaz stated that global sea level is expected to rise by a meter in the next century, which poses a great danger for the world and for Turkey in particular.
Kurnaz said that one-meter-rise in sea level will lead to problems in the inner parts of the Golden Horn and around Kuchukchekmeje parts of Istanbul and will damage a significant part of Turkey’s agricultural lands.
He stressed that the global warming and 70-centimeters-rise of sea level will significantly change the map of Europe, which as a result will divide Istanbul into three islands.
The climate of the northern regions of Turkey such as Trabzon, Samsun and Istanbul would be like the climate of Antalya and Adana by the end of the XXI century, he said.
In his words, locations of glaciers, deserts or forests will completely change in global scale and the Sahara Desert will shift six degrees to the north. Furthermore, some of the desert areas in the south will start to become forests.
If the ice in West Antarctica melts quickly, the sea level will rise rapidly in coastal cities such as Istanbul and Izmir, posing a threat to people living along the coastline, Kurnaz added.
Therefore, people must refrain from buying houses near the seaside and municipalities must ensure that metro exits are in the direction of the land rather than the sea, he stressed.
"With climate change, the severity, frequency and area of events such as fires and floods expand. In other words, a natural disaster that occurs every ten years begins to be seen in every two years, or drought lasts for two years instead of six months", he concluded.
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