From 2018 to today, <a href="http://www.world-today-news.com/pandemics-and-floods-peak-of-the-rainy-season-mongabay-co-id/” title=”Pandemics and Floods Peak of the Rainy Season: Mongabay.co.id”>extreme rainfall has increased by 400%. And temperatures have also increased by 2 or 3 degrees compared to the pre-industrial period. This is what emerges from the study carried out by Italy for Climate researchers according to which the increase in extreme events, from intense rainfall to floods, which have affected various Italian regions, including Sicily, Calabria, Emilia-Romagna and Tuscany «confirms and highlights an increasingly serious hydrogeological risk, fueled by uncontrolled urbanization and the lack of effective prevention plans”. In 2023 alone, Italy recorded 2,360 events of intense rainfall and hailstorms, cataloged as meteorological extremes by the European Sever Weather Database. This data represents a historical peak never reached since 2018, the year in which monitoring began with a consolidated methodology. In just five years, the number of these atmospheric events considered exceptional has more than quadrupled, clearly demonstrating how climate change is transforming our country. For Andrea Barbabella, coordinator of Italy for Climate «it is not about bad weather and exceptional and unpredictable events», but about the effects «of the planetary thermal imbalance that we have produced by burning fossil fuels. And the show we are witnessing in these hours, unfortunately, is now pure normality in the world we have built for ourselves.”
Extreme weather and climate events, such as intense rainfall and periods of drought, are closely related to rising temperatures. Italy is located in one of the most vulnerable areas to climate change, the “hotspot” of the Mediterranean Sea. In recent decades, temperatures in our country have increased at double the rate of the global average, meaning that today we live in an Italy that is approximately 2.5-3 degrees centigrade warmer than pre-industrial levels (1850-1900). A thermal increase that leads to an enormous amount of energy trapped in the atmosphere, which in turn fuels increasingly violent and unpredictable meteorological phenomena.
Climatologists and IPCC scientific reports have been showing for years that as global temperatures rise, not only do these phenomena become more frequent, but also much more intense. Floods that used to occur every 10 or 20 years now recur at an ever-increasing frequency. It is estimated that with an increase of 1.5 degrees centigrade in global temperature, floods considered exceptional become 50% more frequent, and with an increase of 2 degrees centigrade this frequency could increase by up to 70%.
For further information.
Floods, what has happened in Italy in the last 14 years?
Floods, heat, cold, storm surges, rain, drought and wind: the map of extreme events
Drought, rain and landslides: what are the flood numbers in Italy?
