The floods that ripped through communities in northeast Italy is just another drenching dose of climate change’s all-or-nothing weather extremes. Scientists say have been occurring around the world.
Emilia-Romagna’s coastal region was hit twice, first by torrential rain two weeks ago. On drought-parched soils that couldn’t absorb it, overflowing riverbanks overnight, and then by this week’s storm, which killed 13 and left billions in damage.
More rain is on the way as the climate changes, but it will fall on fewer days and in less helpful and more deadly downpours.
The hard-hit region of Emilia-Romagna was especially vulnerable. Its location between the Apennine Mountains and the Adriatic Sea captured this week’s weather system. That dumped half of the typical annual amount of rain in 36 hours.
Below Average Snowfall
“An increase in rainfall overall per year, for example. But a decrease in the number of rainy days and an increase in the intensity of the rain in those few days when it rains,” said Antonello Pasini, a climate scientist at Italy’s National Research Council.
Due to below-average snowfall throughout the winter months, Italy’s north has been parched for two years. Melting snow from the Alps, Dolomites, and Apennines generally provide the consistent runoff that fills Italy’s lakes. Irrigates the agricultural heartland, and keeps the Po and other vital rivers and tributaries running throughout spring and summer.
Plains have dried up and riverbeds, lakes, and reservoirs have receded as a result of the lack of regular snowfall in the mountains. Even when it rains, they cannot recover since the earth is practically “impermeable.” And the rain simply washes over the topsoil and out to sea, according to Pasini.
“So the drought is not necessarily compensated for by these extreme rains,” he explained. “Because the drought in northern Italy depends more on snow being stored in the Alps than on rain.” And we’ve received very little snow in the last two years.”
The new normal of extreme weather occurrences in the Mediterranean. According to Civil Protection Minister Nello Musumeci, needs Italy to adapt and Italy to reassess its defences against floods statewide. Last autumn, a catastrophic storm-triggered landslip on the southern island of Ischia, off the coast of Naples, killed 12 people.
Rapid Climate Transition in Italy
“We can’t just pretend that nothing is happening,” he stated on Thursday. “Everything must change: the programming in hydraulic infrastructures must change, and the engineering approach must change.”
He believes the measures are vital to avoid the types of floods in Italy that have engulfed entire communities after two dozen rivers burst their banks.
The key going forward, he says, admitting that it’s not an easy sale owing to the costs.
“We are not a preventive-minded people.” “We prefer to rebuild rather than prevent,” he told Sky TG24.
Italy is far from alone in seeing a rapid transition from dry to wet conditions. California and the United States West sloshed their way through a record-breaking megadrought, with at least a dozen atmospheric rivers dumping so much rain on the state that a long-dormant lake revived.
“The rainiest events appear to be getting rainier in many places,” Princeton University climate scientist Gabe Vecchi said Thursday.
The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Group on Climate Change scientific group declared in 2021 that it was a “fact” that humans’ greenhouse gas emissions had caused more frequent and intense weather extremes. The panel identified heat waves as the most noticeable, but it also stated that heavy precipitation occurrences have likely risen throughout most of the world.
According to the United Nations report, “there is robust evidence” that record rainfall as well as one-in-five, one-in-ten, and one-in-twenty year type rainfall “became more common since the 1950s.”