http://global-warming.accuweather.com/blog/mt-tb.cgi/176

Australia's famed Great Barrier Reef, treasured as the world's largest living organism, could be killed within decades by global warming, scientists warn in a report leaked Tuesday. The World Heritage site, stretching over more than 345,000 square kilometers (133,000 sq miles) off Australia's east coast, will become "functionally extinct", the scientists are quoted as saying in The Age newspaper.

New data released Monday shows that the melting of mountain glaciers worldwide is accelerating, a clear sign that climate change is also picking up, the UN environmental agency and scientists said. Thirty reference glaciers monitored by the Swiss-based World Glacier Monitoring Service lost about 66 centimetres (two feet) in thickness on average in 2005, the UN Environment Programme said in a statement. "The new data confirms the trend in accelerated loss during the past two and half decades," it added.

With its reservoirs drying up and its harvest threatened, Turkey is in the throes of three-month drought blamed on global warming that has weathermen worried and farmers fearing for their crops. "We haven't had any real rain in the Istanbul area since late October," Meteorology Professor Selahattin Incecik of ITU, the Istanbul Technical University, told AFP. "Normally, December and January are the rainiest months in the region."