Alps said to be at warmest in centuries

Global warming has driven temperatures in the Alps to their highest in 1,300 years, according to one of the authors of an EU-backed climate study.

The study reconstructed the climate back to the year 755 in the region encompassing France's Rhone Valley to the west, Budapest, Hungary, to the east, Tuscany, Italy, to the south and Nuremberg, Germany, to the north.

"We are currently experiencing the warmest period in the Alpine region in 1,300 years," Reinhard Boehm, a climatologist at Austria's Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics, said Tuesday.