Global Warming Re-Draws World Map

One of the most authoritative sources of maps for the world, the Times Atlas of the World, is seeing the consequences of global warming already.

While the fickle coastline of Bangladesh might have been expected to succumb to rising sea waters and more-intense monsoons, some of the other changes, as reported in the Herald Sun of Australia, are more surprising.

Huge stretches of the Rio Grande and Colorado Rivers are now drying out each year -- partially due to over-use by desert communities and complicated diversion and damming schemes, and partially due to increased evaporation from high temperatures, decreased snowpack from dwindling glaciers and winter snow, and decreased summer precipitation -- all of which are seen as potential early signs of global warming.

The Yellow River in China, similarly, could dry out before the 2008 Olympics, The Dead Sea is shrinking, and Lake Chad in Africa has virtually disappeared -- shrinking 95%.

Unmentioned by the Herald Sun, but also potentially requiring attention by atlas-makers of the world: record-low levels in the Great Lakes, one of the world's largest reservoirs of fresh water.

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