A study by World Weather Attribution confirms the decisive role of the climate crisis in exacerbating drought waves in Sardinia and Sicily.
The impacts of climate change They are a concrete and everyday reality for all humanity: no nation is exempt from it. The increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, with exceptional heat waves and flooding due to extraordinary rainfallas well as the rise in sea level due to the melting of the polar caps, have affected the entire planet for years. However, some regions They are more vulnerable than others.
In Sardinia and Sicily, for example, global warming the possibility has increased by 50% that they occur drought waves that could generate water supply problems and serious losses in the agricultural sector.
This is explained by a study carried out by 15 university researchers and meteorological agencies from Italy, Sweden, the United States, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, commissioned by World Weather Attribution, an institute that deals with understand the links between climate change and extreme weather events.
Regarding the two largest islands of Italy, the scientists explained in particular that the drought waves will increase in proportion to climate warming. Which makes the implementation of a drastic transition towards a world with low emissions increasingly urgent. greenhouse gasesin which human activities do not cause disturbances in the balance of the Earth.
Droughts would not have been as severe without climate change
In fact, the episodes of lack of rainfall in Sardinia and Sicily in recent years they would not have been so serious if the pressure of climate change had not existed. They probably would have been serious, but not that “extreme.” And as the average global temperature continues to increasethe drought waves on the two islands are expected to be even more severe in the future.
This also requires adaptation policies, starting with extremely careful management of water resources. “Sardinia and Sicily are increasingly arid due to climate change. The torrid and prolonged heat waves hit their territories more and more frequentlycausing the water present in the soil to evaporate and drying up watersheds,” explained Mariam Zachariah, a researcher at the Grantham Institute in London.
“Cities have endured months water rationing, Lake Pergusa in Sicily has disappeared. Crops have been burned. The effects of drought waves are horrendous,” added Maja Vahlberg, climate advisor at the Red Cross.
With an increase of 2°C, significant changes would occur
To date, the average global temperature has increased, at the surface of lands and emerged oceans, approximately 1.2°Ccompared to pre-industrial levels (that is, before man began burning coal, oil and gas).
He Paris Agreement reached at the end of COP21 in the French capital in December 2015 explains that 2°C should not be exceeded, but also that it should be kept as close to 1.5 as possible. The Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C published by the IPCC (the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) in October 2018 explains that the differences between the two thresholds are enormous.
According to the WWF, the study confirms the need for immediately eliminate the causes of global warming. Which translates above all into the abandonment of fossil fuels. Also because, if for Sicily and Sardinia the situation will be extremely worrying, for other regions of the world it means risk the lives of hundreds of thousands of peopleor lose entire nations forever, as in the case of some Pacific atolls that will disappear from maps due to rising sea levels.
