Cyclone Boris hits Central Europe and Italy:climate change runs faster than our responses

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https://www.valigiablu.it/inondazioni-emilia-romagna-boris-crisi-climatica/

For now there are no injured or missing people, but the images of the floods in Emilia-Romagna in recent hours have brought us to mind what happened just over a year ago.Among the municipalities involved there are Faenza and Castel Bolognese, already seriously affected in May last year.In Faenza the Marzeno river overflowed and flooded some countryside south of the city.In Castel Bolognese, the overflowing of the Senio has caused flooding that is approaching the center.

Flood in Emilia-Romagna:the causes and interventions made so far, and what to do to mitigate the risk and address climate change

The Municipality of Ravenna, in the night, signed an ordinance in which it invites those who live along the banks of the Lamone and Montone rivers to go to the upper floors or to reach the Pala De Andrè, open as a reception point.In the municipalities of Russi, Bagnacavallo and Forlì, among the most affected areas, citizens were invited to avoid unnecessary travel as much as possible, to pay maximum attention to river levels, to stay away from river banks and areas floodables, piers, breakwaters and beaches, not to access the sheds and underpasses if flooded.

In just a few hours, Cyclone Boris brought part of the Emilia-Romagna river system into crisis.“In San Cassiano sul Lamone a total of 353 mm of rain fell in 48 hours, in Trebbio 304 mm, in Casola Valsenio 322 mm.These are unsustainable amounts of rainfall for a medium-small river network like that of upper Romagna", meteorologist Giulio Betti writes in a thread on.“We should think not so much about the quantity of rain, but how long it falls.”

And in fact Cyclone Boris isn't just causing damage to Italy. It has already hit Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania and Austria, where the cyclone dumped rainfall up to five times higher than the September average in four days.In Poland, volunteers and emergency workers rushed to strengthen riverbank defenses in the historic city of Wroclaw, the country's third-largest city, ahead of possible flooding along the Oder and Bystrzyca rivers.In Nysa, around 40 thousand residents were evacuated.Prime Minister Donald Tusk declared a state of natural disaster for a month.

In the Czech Republic, 15 thousand people were evacuated along the Czech-Polish border.Ostrava was among the cities most affected due to the overflowing of the Oder river.According to the local NGO Člověk v tísn, this is the worst flood in the last 27 years.In Slovakia the Danube has reached its peak, Environment Minister Tomáš Taraba said, leaving parts of Bratislava's historic center flooded.In Hungary the river continues to rise, even by about one meter every 24 hours in Budapest.Austria announced a package of measures including tripling the federal disaster fund to 1 billion euros and deferring taxes for affected companies.

In Portugal, however, fires are raging.More than 5,000 firefighters are trying to put out 48 active fires in the country that have burned more than 10,000 hectares of land and killed at least seven people, including three firefighters.Portugal and Spain have seen fewer fires this year, largely due to a wet and rainy start to the year.But they remain vulnerable to flames due to hot and dry conditions.

Cyclones, floods, heat waves, droughts and fires are all faces of anthropogenic climate change.While attributing any extreme weather event to climate change is a long and complicated process, climate scientists – including the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – warn that events of this type would occur as the planet warms.

One climate disaster after another that spares no continent

Extreme rainfall – we read in an article of Guardian about weather events these days – are becoming more common and more intense due to human-caused climate alteration in much of the world, particularly in Europe, most of Asia, central and eastern North America, and in parts of South America, Africa and Australia.A warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, leading to heavier precipitation.Warmer oceans also cause more evaporation, fueling storm systems.For every 1°C increase in average global temperature, the atmosphere is able to hold approximately 7% more moisture.

“These floods are clearly a reminder of the growing threat of climate-induced extreme weather events,” commented Sissi Knispel de Acosta, Secretary General of the European Climate Research Alliance, made up of research groups studying global warming.

In Boris's case, the weather system was fueled by a surge of arctic air from the north, which caused temperatures to plummet over a 24-hour period.“The cold air collided with warmer air from the south, dense with water vapor.The moisture overload came from an unusually warm Mediterranean Sea, which reached last month the highest temperature ever recorded”, he said to New York Times Richard Rood, a climatologist at the University of Michigan, who adds:“While it is not unheard of for a wave of polar air to hit Europe in late summer, it may become more likely to happen in the future due to climate change.”

As the climatologist Antonello Pasini already explained a few weeks ago, global warming is causing the intertropical convergence belt, the area where the heaviest rainfall is concentrated, to move northwards.Which is bringing exceptional rainfall to areas that are normally arid, such as the Sahara, with devastating consequences.This shift also has repercussions on the Mediterranean climate "because the further northward shift of the convergence band also favors the entry of African anticyclones into our territory".When the African anticyclones retreat, cold air currents enter and there are disturbances like those of recent days.

These are violent meteorological events that often end in a short time, and this also makes it difficult to make predictions, Pasini stated again in recent days in the program Uno Mattina su Rai 1:“These phenomena must be followed hour by hour with radar and then a chain must be created that provides information practically in real time to citizens”.

Central Europe's "devastating floods and Portugal's deadly fires will become our new normal," said EU Commissioner for Crisis Management Janez Lenarcic.“This tragedy is not an anomaly.It is quickly becoming the norm for our common future...Europe is the fastest warming continent globally and is particularly vulnerable to extreme weather events like the one we are discussing today.The cost of inaction is far greater than that of action.”

The speed of extreme weather events is outpacing our ability to respond, he wrote in an article on Fact Antonio Scalari a few days ago.And there is a growing risk of combined events - "i.e. extreme conditions that occur simultaneously or in rapid succession due to the interaction of different factors" - which affect urban areas that are increasingly populated and unprepared for phenomena of this type.“The combination of urban sprawl and the increase in extreme weather phenomena is a stressor on stormwater management systems and this, for many cities, could mean more frequent and severe flooding.Urban planning must also address the problem of how to adapt to a new world", concludes Scalari.We are seeing it, unfortunately, these days.

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