Climate change to hit farming, Greek coastline

The average temperature in Greece is expected to rise by 1.5 degrees Celsius in the next 35 years and by up to 4 degrees in the period from 2070 to 2100, experts have told a conference on climate change in Athens.

The rise in temperatures will harm agriculture and erode the country’s coastline as sea levels rise, academics told a seminar at the Goulandris Museum of Natural History late last week.

Rainfall in Greece is expected to drop by 2 percent and cloud cover to shrink by 6 percent, increasing exposure to the sun’s harmful rays,according to Christos Zerefos, supervisor of the Research Center for Atmospheric Physics and Climatology at the Academy of Athens.