Limiting global warming to the 2 degrees Celsius threshold mandated by the Paris Agreement that takes effect on Nov. 4 won't be enough to save countries along the rim of the Mediterranean Sea from turning into deserts by 2100.

This grim scenario for Southern Europe and North Africa can only be prevented if global warming were limited further to a far more challenging 1.5 degrees Celsius, said a new study.

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"The main message is really to maintain at less than 1.5C," said Joel Guiot, lead author of the study and a palaeoclimatologist at the European Center for Geoscience Research and Education in Aix-en-Provence, France.

"For that, we need to decrease the emissions of greenhouse gases very quickly, and start the decreasing now, and not by 2020, and to arrive at zero emissions by 2050 and not by the end of the century."

But if warming were to reach two degrees, the study said deserts will expand significantly in Spain, North Africa and the Near East.

Vegetation will also be affected. Deciduous trees or trees that lose their leaves seasonally will start to disappear from the Mediterranean basin and be replaced with other vegetation.

And those impacts are intensified for the two other scenarios where temperature rises are as high as 5 degrees above preindustrial levels.

"With two degrees of warming, for the Mediterranean we will have a change in the vegetation which has never been known in the past 10,000 years," said Guiot

Guiot and Wolfgang Cramer, of the Mediterranean Institute for Biodiversity and Ecology, studied pollen cores from sediments found in lake mud to build a picture of vegetation and climate during the last 100 centuries.

More oak pollen suggested periods of humid and temperate climate while more fir and spruce pollen indicated chillier conditions.

Global temperatures have risen by an average of 1 degree Celsius since the industrial era began. That level stands at 1.3 degrees for the Mediterranean basin.

"The Med is very sensitive to climactic change, maybe more than any other region in the world," said Guiot.

"A lot of people are living at the level of the sea, it also has a lot of troubles coming from migration. If we add additional problems due to climate change, it will be worse in the future."

The nations involved in the Paris Agreement or the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference held in Paris (also called COP 21) agreed upon and required they would all work towards making sure the Earth's temperature doesn't rise above 2 degrees Celsius.

This degree change is usually agreed upon as being the tipping point to preventing massive effects of climate change.

TagsMediterranean, deserts, Paris Agreement, 1.5 Celsius, Joel Guiot, pollen