Italy is at the zenith of the climate crisis - scientists

The water level seemed to decline, but then the flood raged on. Last weekend, the Venetian lagoon swept the ground floors of the houses, hotels and bars of the "pearl of the Adriatic", and its squares and winding alleys submerged under water. Last time people saw such flood in 1966. They wrote about a crazy whale having swam into the lagoon, but this news turned out to be a fake.

“Well, here we are,” the Apennine news agencies say. “What is happening in Venice confirms that Italy is at the zenith of the climate crisis” When the level of the Adriatic Sea rises by 187 cm above the norm, this is already serious. The question is, what is this “norm" now? 

The catastrophe hasn’t limited itself only to the famous city. Not a day goes by without alarming news from other parts of Italy. A little further to the South, in Tuscany, the Arno River, that lies in Florence and Pisa, has risen on Saturday night to the bridge levels. The Sassi di Matera, where Mel Gibson was filming his “The Passion of the Christ”, has turned into raging streams. In Porto Cesareo in the Apulia region of south-east Italy on a “heel of a boot”, ships anchored in the lagoon, flying over the pier like paper planes because of terrible gusts of wind. 

“Because of its geographical location (and we are in the center of the Mediterranean Sea), Italy found itself in such a “hot spot” where climate change is felt especially acutely,” says the head of the natural modelling laboratory of the National Agency for Innovative Technologies Gianmaria Sannino. «The level of the Mediterranean rises faster than in the ocean, and it heats up much faster. This releases a huge amount of energy, which causes such extreme phenomena.»

“Big water in Venice” or a tornado in the Apulia region is just the tip of the iceberg. The alerts of the cataclysms in Italy are gradually moving from the category of emergency to ordinary. Since the beginning of 2019, 1,543 climatic emergencies have been recorded on the peninsula: tornadoes, heavy rains, large hails, avalanches in the mountains, snow storms, on average, five per day.

When compared with other countries, the situation becomes somehow uncomfortable. Since the beginning of the year, there have been 248 “climate incidents” in Spain, 190 in the UK. To compare: in 2009, 219 devastating natural phenomena occurred in Italy, in Spain 219, in Foggy Albion 47. And in 1999 in Italy - 17, Spain - 24, in the British Isles - 27.  

The residents of the the Apennines have something to be alerted about - the statistics is growing too quickly.