Italy is experiencing what is already its third wave of extreme heat this summer this week, with Africa’s anticyclone Caronte, at its ‘peak’ this Wednesday, putting much of the country on “red alert” and threatening to set new maximum temperatures .
After a first heat wave in mid-June, much of the peninsula experiences two successive new waves of very intense heat, with the subtropical anticyclone Caronte, the strongest of the summer so far, succeeding the anticyclone Cérbero, which already last week thermometers well above 40 degrees in many regions of the country, but especially in the center and south and on the Mediterranean islands of Sardinia and Sicily.
And if the heat wave in June was relatively moderate – although this was the hottest June on record globally, according to the European Observatory Copernicus – the two “heat storms” caused by anticyclones emanating from Africa, both “baptized” with the names of figures from the classical mythology and from “Dante’s Divine Comedy”, put much of the country on “red alert”, jeopardizing the heat record once set in Italy: 48.8 degrees in Sicily, in August 2021, while Sardinia has already reached 48 this year degrees reached month.
Speaking to Lusa, the editor-in-chief of the meteorological daily MeteoLive.it, Alessio Grosso, notes that “the exceptional heat wave that mainly affects the center and south of Italy is not new to the country, as it is due to the presence , now constant, of the African anticyclone during the summer period, which determines the summers in the Mediterranean, causing them to suffer for more than twenty years”.
However, he admits, “these maximum values were rarely seen in the month of July, of 46 and 47 degrees”, and “the concern is the duration of this hot air bubble”, since, at least in the north, it has been relatively ‘spared’ , “the heat is destined to subside very quickly under the breath of strong thunderstorms, favored by the entry of cooler air of Atlantic origin coming from the west”.
Raffaele Salerno, scientific director of the Meteo Expert meteorology society, also tells Lusa that they should be registered by next week “In northern Italy, values are more normal and in the south, the heat will decrease considerably, where values will remain slightly above average in the first week of August.”
However, he also admits that “one possible effect of climate change could be the frequency of heat waves, periods of intense and prolonged heat, such as the one we are currently witnessing”, and which is particularly felt in large urban centers, which is why today 23 cities are on high alert, fallen from Rome — “the infernal city,” as the British newspaper The Times recently called it, referring to “Dante’s Inferno” –, Florence, Naples, Cagliari (Sardinia), Palermo and Catania (in Sicily).
“The incidence of heat waves is more pronounced in urban areas, where the temperature is higher, up to 3 or 4 degrees more, than in surrounding areas. These are the so-called ‘heat islands’, which accentuate periods of intense heat,” he explains out.
The heat waves that are hitting Italy with increasing frequency and intensity are a cause for greater concern, since, according to a study recently published in the scientific journal Nature Medicine, this was the country in Europe with the most heat-related deaths in 2022 (18,010 deaths).
“It is known that the frequency of these episodes in the hottest months of the summer season poses a risk, of a cardiac nature and beyond, to the health of the elderly and vulnerable populations, due to the stress to which the organism is subject,” says Raffaele Salerno.
However, this scientific director notes that while “it is true that we are witnessing a very marked anomalous peak in mid-summer mortality”, as happened in 2022, a scenario comparable only to 2003, “when extreme heat caused significant problems caused in the Europe”, the authors of the article in Nature Medicine only speak of “correlation”, never of “cause”.
“The excess deaths are also related to other conditions, namely problems with the health system and the quality of care, for example. But it is also true that the scorching heat hit the already frail and debilitated elderly, which caused the spike.” of deaths recorded in summer 2022″a scenario that the authorities are trying to avoid this year by regularly warning and advising the population.
Source: DN
