Mediterranean beaches may get too hot for tourists

Mediterranean beaches may get too hot for tourists this century because of global warming and northern Europeans will find the summer balmy enough to stay at home.

"In the summers of the 2080s, potential tourists in the UK and Germany will be able to find much better climatic conditions in their own country than in the Mediterranean," according to a British and Dutch study in the Journal of Sustainable Tourism.

About 100 million people, mostly from northern Europe and led by Germans and Britons, visit the Mediterranean region every year where they spend almost $100 billion.

Any shifts in their holiday habits could have a huge impact on Mediterranean economies including those of Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Turkey and Morocco.

"People don't want to go looking for sun, sea and sand and be forced to sit in the shade because it's too hot," David Viner, said a senior climate scientist at the University of East Anglia in England and co-author.

Beaches in northern Europe, from Ireland and northern France to the Baltics and southern Scandinavia, could become more attractive to holidaymakers in summers in coming decades.

A heatwave in Europe this year means that some northern Europeans are travelling to Mediterranean beaches and finding the weather no warmer than at home.

"Those conditions will become more prevalent in future," Viner said. Many scientists say that fossil fuels burnt in power plants, factories and cars are releasing heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere, raising global temperatures.

Apart from baking temperatures, the attraction of the Mediterranean might fade because the region could become drier, with more frequent water shortages and forest fires. Viner's study with a researcher at Maastricht University in the Netherlands said the Mediterranean climate would become more suitable for tourism in spring, autumn and winter.

Overall, Mediterranean nations' revenues from tourism were likely to decline even if they were more spread over the year.

Northern European resorts like Blackpool in England might stage a revival.

The scientific panel that advises the United Nations says that temperatures are likely to rise by 1.4-5.8 Celsius (2.5-10.4 Fahrenheit) by 2100, bringing more frequent heatwaves, floods, mudslides and helping spread disease. The report said Mediterranean countries could play to other strengths away from the beach such as food, landscapes and monuments left by the Greeks, Romans or Egyptians.

And in the long term, sunbathing might go out of fashion.

(Reuters)