Cold seas, flash floods: ‘La Niña’ is coming, here’s what it will bring

The Pacific Ocean has begun to cool and this, in turn, brings other phenomena to Europe and Italy too, which is why the summer will be hot but with the risk of even violent storms

BOLOGNA – After ‘El Niño’, here is ‘La Niña’. That is: the seas and oceans, in particular the Pacific one, after having warmed up, will gradually become colder and this, in turn, will trigger climate changes in Europe and Italy too. This cooling is called ‘La Niña’ and according to experts it is about to happen. In fact, it has already started. The experts of ‘Il meteo’ explain it well: already in the month of June, according to data collected by the Climate Prediction Center of the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), sea surface temperatures (SST) have ranges well below climate averages in most of the equatorial Pacific Ocean. This comes after the seas and oceans have become increasingly warmer (in particular due to the effect of the so-called ‘El Nino’ in the Pacific area). Well, this anomalous cooling (which follows a warming process that has been talked about at length) is usually called La Niña and has various types of climatic repercussions. What will happen in Italy and Europe?

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The cooling of surface temperatures in the Pacific causes increased precipitation in Southeast Asia, parts of Africa, Brazil and Australia, but also droughts in the western Americas, the Gulf of Mexico and northern Africa -Oriental. But that is not all. As ‘The Weather’ explains well, “one of the most dangerous consequences of La Niña in the world is linked to the occurrence of frequent storms in the Atlantic sector”. In fact, hurricanes form more easily in the central Atlantic basin. And in this case the potential consequences also concern Italy. Because the risk is to have extreme events such as stormsand in the most exceptional cases flash floods which usually affect narrow areas of territory. Phenomena of this kind have already happened, for example, in Tuscany and Romagna.

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If the possibility of a thunderstorm increases, it is also true that the European weather center forecasts very high temperatures for the three summer months, even if the great heat could be interrupted bythunderstorms< /strong>associated with La Niña. In short, the experts of ‘Il meteo’ explain, the summer could be “very hot, characterized by long phases of African high pressure, however frequently interrupted by dangerous intense storms especially in the Central-Northern regions”.