The industrial development provoked huge greenhouse gazes release into the atmosphere. This greenhouse effect enhancing, combined with natural climatic variability, led to the so-called ?Global Warming?. Even if the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports giving more and more details about the possible impacts and the observed climatic variations, many uncertainties remain, especially at the regional scale. Only few Regional Climatic Model (RCM) have been developed at this stage and the downscaling methods are not unequivocal. Furthermore, the climatic models, both global and regional, do not represent all of the existing interactions. For example, vegetation cover, cloud cover or orographic features are poorly integrated in the calculations. The further you go into impact assessment, the greater are the uncertainties as presented in the following scheme. This overview is not exhaustive, but proposes some observed and possible impacts of climate change in the Alps.
(article in Mountain Forum Bulletin 'Melting Mountains' July 2007)
