Italy like the tropics: what is happening to the climate

Cloudbursts, strong thunderstorms, hailstorms and windstorms: Italy is increasingly prey to extreme events due to climate change

ROME – An increasingly tropicalized climate, which makes Italy resemble the Tropics. Where periods of drought alternate with periods of heavy rain. And above all, there are and are increasingly frequent so-called ‘extreme events‘, i.e. violent and sudden bad weather phenomena, which often cause damage to agriculture and beyond. Just speaking of extreme events, just think that in the last week, in Lombardy, there have been more than 70 including cloudbursts, strong thunderstorms, hailstorms and windstorms.

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The data emerges from a monitoring by the regional Coldiretti on Eswd data, the European severe weather database, when the territory is still in the grip of bad weather. “From north to south, from east to west – Coldiretti writes in a note – the Lombard countryside in these hours is still under water, submerged by exceptional quantities of rain fall in the last few days. It is impossible for farmers to enter the field and proceed with seasonal work”, say the Coldiretti technicians.

For Coldiretti of Lombardy it is a situation “that is causing sowing for corn, rice and soya to go haywire” and that “is damaging the meadows intended for fodder for animals, blocking transplants of tomato and the growth of melons, exposes barley and wheat crops to the danger of asphyxiation and makes the plants more fragile when faced with attacks by fungi and parasites”. Coldiretti does not forget the difficulties of beekeepers, “forced to face a difficult spring between excess rainfall and low temperatures, with production drops now inevitable on the first productions such as acacia, dandelion and spring wildflowers”. p>