Italy is getting progressively hotter and drier, a trend which has accelerated significantly over the past 50 years, according to a new study from Italy's National Research Council (CNR).
The study looked at data collected over the past 200 years which showed that temperatures had increased during this period by an average 1.7 degrees while rainfall had diminished by 5% every 100 years.
Over the past 50 years alone temperatures have jumped 1.4 degrees.
The climate report was drawn up by Teresa Nanni and Michele Brunetti from the CNR's Bologna-based Institute for Atmospheric and Climatic Sciences using data from over 100 weather stations. This was then cross-checked with chronicles and other sources of the time.
The hottest year over the past 200 was 2003, when average summer temperatures ran more than four degrees above the average between 1961 and 1990. The coldest year was 1816, dubbed by the press of the
time as the "the year without a summer". A string volcanic eruptions were blamed for the cold, the most powerful of which was in Tambora, Indonesia.
"Looking at temperature lows and highs, there has been a more pronounced increase in the former compared to the latter up until 50 years ago," Nanni observed. "Over the past 50 years this trend has been reversed and now the highs are rising much faster than the lows," she added.
The report on annual rainfall was more difficult to compile because "until recently there were no specialised
meteorological data banks in Italy which, for example, recorded the intensity and duration of rain storms," Nanni said.
Researchers thus relied on data recorded by farming associations and civil engineering agencies and made
cross-checks with available weather reports.
The climate study will be further expanded in the future to include data on atmospheric pressure and cloud cover. Data gathered so far has shown that over the past 50 years there has been an increase of pressure at sea level and a decline in cloud cover.
The CNR report, complied in collaboration with the University of Milan, was published by the International
Journal of Climatology.
