Swiss climate warms twice as fast as northern hemisphere: study*

GENEVA, June 26 (AFP) Jun 26, 2007

Switzerland's climate has since the 1970s warmed twice as fast as the
average for the northern hemisphere, a Swiss public research institute
said Tuesday.

The Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research said in a
study that temperatures in Switzerland increased by an average of 0.57
degrees Celsius per decade over the past 30 years, compared to an
average 0.25-degree hike for the entire northern hemisphere.

Spring and winter were the seasons most affected, with an average
increase in Switzerland of 0.8 degrees Celsius per decade during the
same period, the institute said in a statement.

A graph in the study indicated that the pace of the temperature increase
in the country picked up considerably from the 1980s onwards.

One of the authors, Martine Rebetez, said the trend helped explain the
retreat of Alpine glaciers as well as the early blossomming during spring.

Rebetez said the speed of global warming in Switzerland was due to the
country's distance from major oceans that help cool the atmosphere by
absorbing part of the heat, as well as its relatively high latitude.

"The closer you are to the North Pole, the more you can record energy
and heat radiation," she told AFP.

Northern Sweden, Russia and part of China are experiencing the same
trend as Switzerland, Rebetez added.

The study carried out with fellow scientist Michael Reinhardt was based
on data collected from 12 sites in the country at altitudes ranging from
316 to 2,490 metres (1,037 to 8,169 feet).

It was published in the scientific journal Theoretical and Applied
Climatology.