Israel’s worst-ever forest fire earlier this month confirms predictions on the impact of global warming in the Mediterranean basin, according to one of Israel’s leading climate experts.

“The fire disaster in the Carmel Mountains near Haifa is a taste of the future,” Guy Pe’er, co-author of Israel’s National Report on Climate Change, said on Wednesday.

Nearly a decade ago, Mr Pe’er and other scientists warned that warming would create conditions such as heat waves, decreased and delayed rainfall, leading to a higher risk of intense forest fires.

The recent four-day blaze, which destroyed some five million trees across 4,800 hectares, arose from these very conditions, he said.

The national report predicted that a temperature increase of only 1.5°C compared to pre-industrial times would cause the region’s desert to expand some 300-500 kilometres to the north.