Rome like Antalya and Milan like Austin: this is how the climate in our cities will change
By 2053, over a thousand counties in the United States, compared to the current fifty, will experience temperatures above 51 degrees Celsius. An area that is home to 107.6 million Americans and covers a quarter of the country’s surface. “Extreme heat belt” they now call it, “extreme heat belt,” and it stretches from the northern borders of Texas and Louisiana to Illinois, Indiana and even Wisconsin. This was supported by the First Street Foundation, a non-profit research group, in its new report, the National Risk Assessment: Dangerous Heat. According to projections, Texas and Florida in particular will have to face a very difficult situation.
In Europe and Italy? In addition to the analyzes of the Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change (Cmcc), in Switzerland they have tried to give a concrete face to the climate of our cities in thirty years by comparing them to the current condition of other urban centers in different parts of the world. TheUnderstanding climate change from a global analysis of city analogsmade by a group of climatologists from Eth, the Zurich Polytechnic.
“We examined 520 cities among those with more than one million inhabitants in choices,” he says from Switzerland Tom Crowther. English, born in 1986, is professor of global eco ecosystems at Eth, co-chair of the United Nations advisory committee on ecosystem restoration and one of the authors of the research. “Nineteen climate variables were used that reflect the different regimes of temperature and precipitation. Model chosen to show the magnitude of the changes that we will face, also considering the implementation of mitigation policies. It is an analysis that allows us to estimate which large cities will remain relative similar and which, on the contrary, will be different from a conditional point of view. Overall, 77 percent of the urban centers surveyed will experience surprising change“.
some examples: Rome could resemble today’s Antalya, which rises on the Asian coast of Turkey a thousand and 640 kilometers away to the southeast and where the rain disappears for four months. Milan, on the other hand, should be approaching Austin in Texas, which from May to the end of September is lived with temperatures above 30 degrees. The same music in Turin, which risks becoming like San Antonio, also in Texas. The bad thing about the study is that the estimate is optimistic, assuming that CO2 in less than 30 years they will be stabilized thanks to laws to deal with the environmental crisis such as the one just approved in the USA and in some European countries. But that’s not necessarily the case.
In the Eth study there are only three Italian cities, with the addition of the State of San Marino which could face climatic conditions comparable to the current Tirana, in Albania. It is not necessarily such bad news moving to the south east. In this roulette, which is likely to overturn our idea of geography, there is worse. Stockholm in Sweden could have temperatures of Vienna, Austria, one thousand and 200 kilometers in a straight line to the south. Which in turn risks becoming Tbilisi, Georgia, over two thousand and 300 kilometers away. And again: Helsinki in Finland is linked with Bratislava in Slovakia, Madrid with Marrakech in Morocco, Lisbon with Valletta in Malta, Munich with Rome, Tel Aviv with Karachi in Pakistan, Athens with Fez in Morocco. And again: Valencia could become like Bangalore in India, while Hong Kong like Dhaka in Bangladesh. Without forgetting London, which in Zurich is approached respectively by Barcelona and Istanbul. Yes, London like Barcelona.
The coach
Ettore Messina: “Nature rebels but politics thinks about seats. We need teamwork”
by Cristina Nadotti
Moving a few years into the future, according to a forecast developed by National Geographic based on data from the University of Maryland and the Australian Research Council Center of Excellence for Climate Extremes, in 2070 about 90 cities in the world will experience conditions never experienced before by any other on the planet. We mention a few: Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, Ahvaz in Iran, Amarah in Iraq or Aswan in southern Egypt, have temperatures for most of the year well above 50 degrees. Alor Setar in Malaysia could instead be hit by monsoons continuously. In Balikpapan, in Indonesian Borneo, where 800 thousand people live, the days with temperatures over 35 degrees will go from the current two per year to 238. A fate that could be met by other centers in that part of Asia.
But the problem is not just temperatures and rainfall. “Climate change brings with it increasing disparities, both geographically and within the regions themselves“, points out Francesco Bosello, professor at the Department of Environmental Sciences, Informatics and Statistics at Ca ‘Foscari in Venice. “In Italy it will entail the widening of the rift between north and south, which will have to deal with major emergencies and with the relative consequences on the economy, tourism and the health of citizens. the two parts of the country by about 16 percentage points compared to today. And it is a phenomenon that, expanding the picture, applies to the Mediterranean area “.
Reportage
Sea bath and local white wine. The Baltic Sea like the Mediterranean
by our correspondent Jaime D’Alessandro
The fact that Italy may perhaps not change its face as much as Texas or Indonesia is, in short, a small consolation. The Joint Research Center (Jrc) of Seville, which works for the European Commission for socio-economic analysis for the conception, development, implementation and monitoring of EU policies, foresees that the impact of the climate crisis on the Mediterranean area will be five times greater than that of Central and Northern Europe. It will add to the economic disparities that already exist among the population groups. Therefore, after having imagined Rome as Antalya, Milan as Austin and Turin as San Antonio, it will also be necessary to try to guess in what social conditions we will live in 2050. Otherwise it is difficult to field solutions capable of avoiding the worst.