The havoc climate change may wreak in the future is now one of the Italian people's biggest fears, according to new research.
The study, conducted by ResPublica SWG, showed that 15% of Italians believe global warming is the most serious threat the country faces, up from 11% in 2005.
The news comes after last weekend's publication of a European Commission report forecasting that climate change will hit Italy particularly hard.
It predicted that, if nothing is done to slow global warming and adapt to its consequences, Italy's gross domestic product will fall by a quarter in the second half of the century.
Tourism will be hammered as soaring temperatures push holidaymakers to less hostile northern climes and rising sea levels gobble up swathes of Italian coastline.
Winter tourism will suffer too, as less snow will mean there are fewer pistes to ski down.
Another major Italian earner, the agro-food sector, will be hit by lower and more erratic rainfall levels, while long droughts will turn areas of the south into desert.
Furthermore, industry and consumers will have to pay more and more for increasingly scarce energy and water resources.
Terrorism and war remain the Italians' top fears, the study showed, with 39% of the people interviewed saying they are the biggest threats.
But concern about this issue has fallen sharply since 2005, when 63% said it was the number one danger.
Global warming also ranks behind crime in the fear ranking (23%), but it comes well ahead of other potential threats like natural disasters.
A recent study by the National Research Council (CNR) predicted that temperatures in Italy will surge during the 21st century, especially in the summertime, with seasonal averages going up by as much as 5%.
Environmentalists say the effects of global warming are already being felt here.
The flowers of acacia shrubs are starting to bud in some parts of Italy, they say, because of the unusually mild winter.
A separate CNR report published last year revealed how tropical marine life species are moving into Mediterranean waters that used to be too temperate for them.
It said that 20% of fish in the Mediterranean are now "immigrant" species that have moved up from southern seas via the Suez Canal and the Strait of Gibraltar.
Italian environmental association Legambiente recently published research showing that global warming is also helping diseases like malaria come back to Italy.
"We are at the southern edge of the globe's temperate area and that's why Italy is being hit most by the shattering of climatic equilibriums," said Legambiente chief Francesco Ferrante.
