Sardinia was once accustomed to two or three extreme thunderstorms a year . Today, 35 years later, some areas of the island experience more than ten . Drought aside, the climate is increasingly revealing another side: brief but extremely violent rains, concentrated within a few kilometers and within minutes, capable of putting pressure on waterways, slopes, and drainage networks.

This is according to an international study published in the journal Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences and led by the University of Milan , with contributions from the Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate of the National Research Council and the Energy System Research company. The researchers, coordinated by Francesco Cavalleri, analyzed the period 1986-2022 using a new high-resolution meteorological reanalysis dataset. The results show a significant increase in extreme events , especially in summer and autumn.

While the increase in summer is particularly evident in the pre-Alpine areas between Piedmont and Valle d'Aosta, in Lombardy, and in Alto Adige—where events have increased from around 10 per year in the 1990s to over 20—in autumn, the increase is concentrated in some coastal areas of Liguria, the Ionian Sea, and, as mentioned, Sardinia: here, the two to three typical annual events of the past now exceed ten. "The results contribute to understanding the effects of climate change on extreme precipitation in Italy," explains Cavalleri, emphasizing how these data are crucial for civil protection policies, the resilience of existing infrastructure, and the planning of future ones.

(Unioneonline/vf)

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