The study modelled what would happen to vegetation in the Mediterranean basin under four different paths of future carbon emissions.
Researchers found that under the worst case scenarios, global temperatures would rise by almost 5C, causing deserts to emerge in southern Europe.
But the study warns that even if targets agreed at last year’s Paris climate deal are met, climate change is still likely to be beyond anything experienced in the region in the past 10,000 years.
“The Med is very sensitive to climatic change, maybe much more than any other region in the world,” said lead author Joel Guiot of Aix-Marseille University.
The southern Mediterranean has also seen temperatures rise by 30 percent more than the global average since the industrial revolution.
The impact of forest fires and deforestation to make way for agriculture was not taken into account.
Researchers found that after running four models of what would happen to vegetation in the future, only the strictest cut in emissions would see ecosystems remain within the necessary boundaries.
According to Guiot, the aim is to maintain global warming at under 1.5C, which he said can only be achieved “if we decrease the emissions of greenhouse gases very quickly, and start the decreasing now, and not by 2020, and to arrive at zero emissions by 2050 and not by the end of the century.”
Meanwhile, the Portuguese cities of Lisbon, Porto and Faro will on 12 November be staging protests in defence of the climate and against the prospection and exploration of oil along the Portuguese coastline.
Despite the coming into effect this Friday of the ground-breaking Paris Climate Change deal, environmentalists in Portugal still argue the battle is far from over.
João Camargo, an activist with the Climáximo movement and climate change researcher at the University of Lisbon, made the announcement at a meeting in Lisbon this week titled “Saving the Climate is to stop gas and oil”.
Portuguese environmentalists will be using the staging of the Marrakech Climate Change Conference, which runs from 7 to 18 November, to raise awareness about global warming and the effect thereof here in Portugal.
According to João Camargo, Portugal’s biggest problems in dealing with climate change are “not only public climate policies, but also exploration contracts signed to drill for oil and gas.”
The contracts cover 33,000 square metres off the Portuguese coast and Camargo said any climate policy in Portugal cannot claim validity unless it starts with these contracts being declared null and void.
“What is being proposed with these concessions in Portugal is totally irresponsible and it seems that regarding the issue of climate change does not exist for the Portuguese government.”
Despite the prospection off the coastline by Galp, Repsol and ENI being postponed, “these companies have already announced they are aiming to drill in 2017.”
He warned that despite demonstrations in the recent past, “especially in the Algarve”, stalled proceedings, they will return.
In terms of the effects of climate change, Portugal broke weather records in June, July, August and September, with temperatures reaching record highs, while rainfall was exceptionally low.
Figures showed that July 2016 was the second hottest on record, and was only beaten by temperatures reached in 1989.
Average maximum temperatures were also the highest ever in July, with highs of 32.19 degrees, almost four degrees above what would normally be expected for the month of July.
June 2016 was also the hottest since records were first logged.
Overall, one in four weather stations on mainland Portugal recorded a temperature of 40 degrees on at least one occasion between the final fortnight of June and the beginning of July. Portugal has in recent years smashed a host of weather records.
December 2015 had been the second warmest December in Portugal since records began in 1931, while the whole of 2015 was the second warmest in the past 15 years, and the fourth driest.
Meanwhile, 2015 also recorded the hottest November in the last 34 years in Portugal, with a heatwave in some parts of the mainland, though the month will be remembered for the flooding across the Algarve which caused severe damage in places like Albufeira.
Average temperatures in Portugal have in the last 40 years increased at a rate of 0.5 degrees per decade - twice as fast as globally - posing major dangers to the country, according to Filipe Duarte Santos, professor at the Faculty of Sciences of Lisbon University who, along with various entities, monitors climate change both nationally and internationally.
He has repeatedly forecast that climate changes in Portugal will be more frequent and will be accompanied by more intense droughts and “extreme precipitation” that will bring with it the risk of flooding and landslides.
“Portugal is more vulnerable to climate change due to it having a relatively long coast with significant extensions of dunes and estuaries,” he said in 2015, adding: “Small enclosed beaches, which have a great landscape and touristic value, are especially vulnerable to a rise in average sea level.”