Cumbria's tourism board has joined the growing clamour against any further research into the burying of nuclear power station waste within the borders of the Lake District national park.

The board – which oversees the park, the county's largest earner and one of the most-visited group of attractions in the UK – has also stated its strong opposition to investigations in the Solway Coast area of outstanding natural beauty on the West Cumbrian side of the famous lakes and fells.

Soot from burned wood and diesel exhausts may have twice the impact on global warming than previously thought, according to a new study published on Tuesday.

The "black carbon" is said to be the second most important man-made agent of climate change.

The findings, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres, suggest there may be untapped potential to curb global warming by reducing soot emissions.

Countries in the Middle East and north Africa will be among those hardest hit by global warming, unless the upward trend for greenhouse gas emissions can be checked, the World Bank warned last month at the Doha climate change conference.

There will be lower rainfall, higher temperatures and continuing desertification, said Rachel Kyte, World Bank vice-president for sustainable development, during her presentation of the report on Adaptation to a Changing Climate in the Arab Countries.

According to the forecasts, average temperatures could rise by 3C between now and 2050. But night temperatures in city centres could increase by double that figure. The report notes that over the last three decades 50 million people have been affected by climate disasters. Severe flooding is now a recurrent event. But the increasing scarcity of water resources is the biggest challenge for countries in the region, which already have some of the lowest per capita reserves in the world.

Two aircraft have flown over an oil drilling ship that ran aground in a severe Alaskan storm and saw no sign that the vessel was leaking fuel or that its hull had been breached.

The Royal Dutch Shell ship, the Kulluk, which was used in the Arctic last summer, ran aground on Monday on a sand and gravel shore off an uninhabited island near Kodiak Island in the Gulf of Alaska. The ship appeared stable, according to US federal on-scene response co-ordinator Captain Paul Mehler.