2007 is quickly coming to a close, and for the environmental community that means two big meetings are about to occur. The first begins tomorrow (Monday the 12th) in the Mediterranean port city of Valencia, Spain. It is the meeting of the Nobel winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and they are coming together to make a concise report on global warming.

From their official site, a snappy little video plays explaining just what has come together to make this report. The fourth volume will be a condensed and concise version of three massive volumes released this year that contains our current knowledge on global warming. It contains more than 2500 scientific expert reviews, authored by more than 800 experts.

The fourth and final report will be the end result of six years work for more than 450 lead authors from over a hundred and thirty countries.

And the tag line that every news agency is running with:  “When the world’s paramount experts on global warming gather in Spain next week, they will not have to travel far to witness the impact of rising temperatures.”

“Many people think desertification affects only Africa, Asia or Latin America,” Juan Sanchez, a department head at the Centre for Research on Desertification (CIDE) near Valencia. “But we are also at risk.”

Over the past decade we’ve seen Europe suffer massive and tragic heat waves. But the problem is more than random increases in temperature. Most of Spain suffers from dry spells, but recently aridity is becoming more and more of a problem thanks to human development and changing rainfall patterns.

According to CIDE, approximately a seventh of Spain is at risk of desertification. For those of us who get a little lost on what desertification actually is, we once again turn to Wikipedia:

Desertification is the degradation of land in arid, semi arid and dry sub-humid areas resulting from various climatic variations, but primarily from human activities.

The areas most at risk are the Canary Islands, where 57% of the territory is threatened, and two eastern provinces on the Spanish mainland, Valencia (29%) and Murcia (37%). And sadly, unlike some countries at risk, there are areas of Spain that the UN believes are already irreversibly damaged. In fact, the figure sits at six percent of the territory of Spain.

Sadly the European Environment Agency (EEA) believes that Spain will not be the only one to suffer. They predict that by the end of this century, temperatures in Europe will rise by between 2.0 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) and 6.2 C (11.16 F).

The EEA also singled out Spain, southern Italy, Greece and Turkey as areas where lessened rain will soon be the norm, and subsequently reduce water for farms, cities and hydropower plants.

“The Mediterranean is especially vulnerable and faces the threat of large-scale migration and the disruption of local economies,” Italian expert Antonio Navarra of Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Vulcanology, told AFP in a recent interview. “We are looking at major impacts that could be put tremendous stress on agriculture, water management, energy production and tourism.”

“In 25 to 50 years,” said Sanchez, “if we do not stop the process of climate change, temperatures will rise, torrential rains will be more intense and erosion will increase.”

(Torrential rainfall – following devastating forest fires – washes away already damaged soil, creating the erosion that Sanchez mentions.)

In the lead up to the December global climate change conference in Bali, this report holds special significance. If not for the jokes it will provide John Stewart concerning “cheat sheets” for politicians, then for the combined political power the document will represent.

AFP via PhysOrg - Climate change: Europe’s most arid country battles desertification