• However, all models agree that the warming will be significant and likely unprecedented in human history, that continents will warm more than oceans, that high latitudes will warm more than low latitudes, that sea levels will rise, snow and sea ice extent and thickness will decrease, and that there will be an increase in average global precipitation, accompanied by major changes in the distribution of precipitation.

• Our forest area change estimates are lower than the FAO estimates that were adjusted to the humid do-main (17) by an amount of –0.5 X 106 ha year~1 for each continent.

• Africa is a prime example of how a continent that has suffered from major climatic variations in the last few millennia (while the mean temperature of the planet decreased only slightly) - and has been marked by the disappearance of whole landscapes and civilizations - represents a simple analogy of what a warming of several degrees in a few decades can do.