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Impacts on the natural environment

Temperature and weather changes

The global emissions of greenhouse gases mentioned above have led to changes in the world's climate and temperatures that can be seen in Italy, impacting the environment around them.

Before the first signs of climate change and due to its geographical position, the Italian climate rarely experienced extreme events. It varied from region to region due to differences in latitude, relief and the influence of the sea. In fact, in the main part of Italy the climate is Mediterranean, with cold winters and snow in the mountains, while in the rest of the country the climate is subtropical, both humid and with high temperatures. (Climate of Italy)

However, since the first visible climate change, Italy is at the forefront of this change, with rising temperatures, melting glaciers, an increase in the number of extreme floods due to sea rise and high rainfall, and more frequent and prolonged periods of drought.

The Minister for the Environment, Sergio Costa, has even spoken of "tropicalisation", as Italy is facing an increase in extreme events with a higher frequency of violent events, seasonal shifts, short and intense rainfall, droughts and floods, and the rapid transition from cold to heat.

These climatic variations could be noticed in July 2021, when heavy rains were seen causing a lot of damage, while a month later the country experienced a record temperature, with a maximum temperature of 48.8 degrees, in Sicily putting 26 cities under red alert.

These two phenomena reflect a changing climate in recent years, with an increase in extreme phenomena, which are more frequent, more sudden and more violent.

In addition to the increase in these extreme events, the changing Italian climate has seen a decrease in precipitation, such as the winter of 2022 which left Italy with 1⁄3 less rain. The average temperature, meanwhile, has increased, both in winter and summer.

With the winter of 2022, recorded as the 5th warmest winter on the planet. This temperature increase is also measurable at the surface of the sea.

As mentioned earlier, these changes are visible, at a regional level, as temperature changes in the Lazio region, where the capital, Rome, is located. This region is one of the warmest in Italy.

File:Annual mean temperature, trend and anomaly, in Rome from 1979 to 2022.png

Figure?: Annual mean temperature, trend and anomaly, in Rome from 1979 to 2022.[1]

The Italian capital has not been spared from global warming, as the city's average temperature has risen between 1979 and 2022, from an annual average of 14.6°C in 1980 to an average of 16.3°C 40 years later. So it is getting hotter in the Rome area.

If we detail this increase a little more, and take the months of July and January between 1900 and 2018, the temperature has increased by 1.4°C for July and 1.2°C for January, and this increase is still rising.

For the future, two scenarios have been developed for Italy based on the IPCC reports. Each scenario gives a probable climate variant resulting from the emission level chosen as a working hypothesis.

File:Two-meter seasonal scale temperature change maps over Italy from the EURO-CORDEX ensemble according to the RCP4 5 and RCP8 5 scenarios for the period 2021-2050 compared to the reference period 1981-2010.png

Figure ?: Two-meter seasonal scale temperature change maps over Italy from the EURO-CORDEX ensemble according to the RCP4 5 and RCP8 5 scenarios for the period 2021-2050 compared to the reference period 1981-2010.[2]

The first scenario (RCP4.5) envisages an increase in greenhouse gas emissions for several more decades, before stabilising and then decreasing before the end of the century. The RCP8.5 scenario models the most extreme case, with no regulation of greenhouse gas emissions.

The CMCC (Euro-Mediterranean Climate Change Centre Foundation) and the 2 scenarios seen above study the climate evolution between 2021 - 2100, based on a 1981 - 2010 reference. In Italy, we can see an increase in temperature, a decrease in the number of cold days, an increase in the number of consecutive days without rain and a decrease in summer rainfall for both scenarios. The number of days with winter precipitation increases in the north of the country while it decreases in the south.

A difference is noticeable for the scenario with no CO2 reduction (RCP8.5), which follows the same projections as the first scenario, but with much higher percentages of change.

Short term projections have been made from 2021 to 2050, we can see that the projections predict a global warming of temperatures, up to +2°C for southern Italy, in the months of June, July and August for the 8.5 scenario.

Not only has the temperature and climate disruption been impacted by climate change, we can see that the sea level has also been modified.

Sea level rise

With the ongoing climate change, and thus the global increase in temperature, the polar ice caps and glaciers will continue to melt. Sea level rise is therefore expected and the Mediterranean coastline will be affected. According to the IPCC's CMIP6 model projection for the Mediterranean sea, under the SSP3-7.0 scenario, the sea level will rise by 0.6±0.3 m (spread P5-P95) by year 2100.(ref: Iturbide, M., Fernández, J., Gutiérrez, J.M., Bedia, J., Cimadevilla, E., Díez-Sierra, J., Manzanas, R., Casanueva, A., Baño-Medina, J., Milovac, J., Herrera, S., Cofiño, A.S., San Martín, D., García-Díez, M., Hauser, M., Huard, D., Yelekci, Ö. (2021) Repository supporting the implementation of FAIR principles in the IPCC-WG1 Atlas. Zenodo, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.3691645. Available from: https://github.com/IPCC-WG1/Atlas) (should one add a figure from IPCC atlas?) An even more alarming estimate was published by Strauss et al. in 2021. There the prediction was a global 8.9 m sea level rise following a 4 degree Celsius warming by year 2300, which in turn would require the reallocation of the 8.9% of the Italian population in the affected regions, as of today.(https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac2e6b/pdf)

In 2007, the then active Italian Ministry for the Environment, Land and Sea (ref wiki page) stated that plains and coastal areas of about 4500 km2 are at high risk of flooding in year 2100.(ref:https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/natc/itanc4.pdf) (Add which specific regions!)Their flood vulnerability assessment raised concern for the increased human activity along the coastlines, causing further erosion and damage to the environment. Hence, the anthropogenic stress in forms of industrial processes, growing urbanization and tourism, has reduced the coastal fringe resilience to sea level rise, as dunes have become fragmented or destroyed, or beaches narrowing to only a few meters or less. This could lead to consequences for human health and infrastructure in the case of a flood.(ref: https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/natc/itanc4.pdf and https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/natc/ita_nc5.pdf)

Impacts on people

According to the IPCC and its latest reports climate change has been partly caused by humans but they are also the first to suffer the consequences.

In Italy, the effects are already being felt on the territory, where the government has not taken measures to deal with the magnitude of the situation. This has created numerous impacts on the economy, infrastructure, health and climate migration.

Economic impacts

The IPCC has pointed out that the cost of reducing emissions would be less than the cost of damage. However, at present, we can already see economic losses due to climate change in Italy. Infrastructure, tourism and the agricultural sector are the most affected by economic losses.

In fact, a 15% drop in wine production has been noted for the year 2018, even though the country is the world's largest wine producer.

Extreme phenomena such as floods and fires have caused colossal losses to agriculture, and have caused ¼ of the cultivable land to disappear in 25 years. In 2021, a loss of 25% of rice, 10% of wheat and 15% of fruit was recorded. This loss is estimated at nearly 14 billion euros in 2018 and forecasts for some regions a 25% drop in GDP (Gross Domestic Product) by 2080.

Fires have an impact on crops, but also on the timber sector, increasing the trade deficit of the timber sector. The losses do not stop there, if we take into account the immediate costs of extinction and rehabilitation as well as the long-term costs of reconstruction, a fire would cost Italians about ten thousand euros per hectare.

Moreover, due to extreme events, Italian cities are increasingly threatened by floods and would cause damages, material and human, of about 1.6 billion euros per year by 2050.

The economic impact of flooding in Italy can be seen in the 2019 state of emergency in Venice, where damage has been estimated at hundreds of millions of euros.

According to the European Environment Agency, the economic damage caused by extreme events between 1980-2020 has caused the loss of 90 billion euros to Italy, and reinforces the economic inequalities present in the country.

Moreover, future projections show that the costs of climate change impacts increase exponentially as temperatures rise in the different scenarios, with values ranging from 0.5% to 8% of GDP by the end of the century.

Health impacts

Through the manifestation of mental health problems, illnesses due to climate change that disrupt food systems and increase infectious diseases and in the most extreme cases lead to death, human health is already being impacted by climate change.

File:Map of Italy modelling the Heat Wave Forecast and Warning System bulletin of 1 August 2018.png

Figure ?: Map of Italy modelling the Heat Wave Forecast and Warning System bulletin of 1 August 2018.[3]

Indeed, increases in temperature, ozone concentration or fine dust, particularly in urban areas, would increase deaths from ischaemic heart disease, stroke, nephropathy and metabolic disorders due to heat stress.

This impact is most likely to affect vulnerable people such as the elderly, children, pregnant women and people with chronic diseases, and widens the inequality gap in health care.

Rising temperatures and heat waves are one of the causes of death every year in Italy, which has prompted Italy to create the Heat Wave Forecasting and Warning System bulletins.

The Ministry of Health has set up Heat Wave Warning and Forecasting System (HHWWS) bulletins, if we take the example of the summer 2018 heatwave, 17 countries are in levels 2-3. Level 3 corresponds to conditions that may lead to health problems for vulnerable people, while level 3 indicates emergency conditions with possible negative health effects for non-vulnerable people. REF

Climate change has caused many impacts, and this can be shown through the Climate Risk Index 2020 ranking which reports events between 1999 and 2018. The studies rank the impacts of climate change in terms of economic losses, GDP losses and deaths.

In the ranking that records the highest number of deaths related to extreme weather events, Italy is the 6th country in the world and the first in Europe with almost 20,000 people dying due to floods and heat waves.

Impacts on housing

As mentioned earlier, Italian infrastructures are impacted by climate change and the effects are already visible.

Indeed, with territories where buildings, houses, roads and bridges are poorly or not maintained, material damage is present.

The most common causes of damage are floods such as the Acqua alta in 2019, which submerged the city of Venice under water, flooding homes and leaving them without electricity. Historical monuments were also impacted, such as St Mark's Basilica, which was flooded for the second time in less than a year and a half, whereas this had only happened four times in the last 1,200 years.

These floods have made the ground and ground floors of Venice's homes too wet to live in.

In 2021, near Lake Como in northern Italy, severe weather caused serious damage to nearby towns.

The rainfall caused the lake to overflow its banks, which in turn led to a great deal of damage, such as flooding, landslides and the transport of rocks, trees and even cars by the force of the muddy torrent, destroying everything in its path.

According to a study, 91% of Italian municipalities are threatened by floods and landslides, with the consequences described above.

Impacts on migration

Rising temperatures and lack of water have caused fruits to change location, as citrus fruits, peaches and olives, usually from the south, have migrated north over time.

Like biodiversity, the impact of global warming has also caused people to migrate, as their environment has become unliveable. Decreased agricultural production, water scarcity and rising sea levels have forced people to move away from their homes, impacting the poorest people most rapidly.

If we take the example of Venice, which is one of the Italian cities most affected by the impacts of climate change, the city has seen its population decrease over the years. In 1966, the population was 121,000, while predictions for the end of 2022 show that the city may well fall below 50,000 inhabitants.

Moreover, the city could be swallowed up, according to the people of Venice "it's not a question of if it will happen, it's just a question of when it will happen."

The Planpincieux glacier is also in the news, with 500,000 cubic metres of the glacier threatening to collapse due to the scorching temperatures hitting the Valle d'Aosta region in 2020, a year after a similar warning.

75 people had to be evacuated by the Italian civil protection, including dozens of residents.

According to the authorities, ⅕ of the country is becoming desertified, and by 2100, 5,000 km2 will end up under water due to rising sea levels causing more and more climate migration.

This migration is spreading globally, and according to the World Bank, global warming could force 216 million people to migrate by 2050.