Med to lose pull as Earth heats up

As the climate heats up, fewer of us will be flying south to the Mediterranean and beyond to find holiday sunshine, according to a computer model predicting the effects of global warming on tourism. Instead the south coasts of England, Wales and Ireland will see an influx of tourists put off by the Med's searing temperatures.

The researchers have already used their model, which factors in changes in climate, population and economic conditions across the world, to predict that tourism demand will shift northwards and to higher altitude destinations. Now they have extended the model to include domestic tourists.

"More people will stay in their home country, particularly Germans and Brits," said Richard Tol at Hamburg University. Germans are the most travelled nation with 72m international tourists and the UK is third with 53m. Both are rich with unreliable weather and close neighbours. But as the weather heats up, the model predicts more will stay within our borders.

The tourism losers in the next decades, are set to be Greece, Italy, Spain, and the Caribbean. Tourists will flock to the Baltic coast, southern Sweden, Ireland, the Alps, Croatia and southern Britain.