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Italy to suffer ‘exceptionally hot’ temperatures this summer

The latest medium-range forecasts predict temperatures several degrees above seasonal average again this summer with a series of heatwaves and an elevated risk of drought, warned Italian meteorologists on Monday.

Published: 17 June 2024 11:10 CEST

Italy to suffer 'exceptionally hot' temperatures this summer

A tourist cools off at the fountain in Piazza del Popolo, Rome. Southern Europe was braced for another particularly hot summer following the latest mid-range forecasts. (Photo by Tiziana FABI / AFP)

“Data from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) suggests that July and August could be exceptionally hot in the Mediterranean,” climate scientist Luca Mercalli, president of the Società meteorologica italiana (Italian meteorological society) told news agency Adnkronos on Friday.

“There’s no big news from now to June 20-25th,” Mercalli says. “Storms continue in the north and it remains hot in the south.”

From July however, he predicts the beginning of “a decidedly hot phase across the whole Mediterranean.

“We should therefore have a July and also August with temperatures above average.”

The first heatwave of the summer was expected at the end of the week, with temperatures of up to 39-40 degrees forecast for Rome, Florence, and Naples, and potentially even higher temperatures in Sicily and Sardinia.

Temperatures at the start of the week were already 10 degrees above seasonal averages on Monday, said Antonio Sanò, meteorologist and founder of Italian weather website IlMeteo.it.

Mercalli cautioned that, while short-term forecasts (up to 10 days) are generally reliable, longer-range predictions come with higher uncertainty.

However, the data available so far indicates a warmer-than-average summer across Europe.

Meteo, arriva il caldo africano su tutta Italia: le temperature previste https://t.co/NvEMVJj2q6

— meteogiornale (@meteogiornaleit) June 15, 2024

The latest updates from IlMeteo.it predict temperatures at the end of June will be about 1°C above the average in most parts of Europe. This trend is expected to continue into July and August.

Temperatures in Italy, Spain, and the Balkans will potentially be 2°C above average over summer due to the increasing influence of African anticyclones, according to forecasters from IlMeteo.

Previously, the milder Azores wave of high pressure was more dominant, IlMeteo explains, but in recent years warm air fronts from North Africa have caused more intense and prolonged heatwaves.

This was expected to lead to prolonged heatwaves with maximum temperatures exceeding 40°C in many areas.

Last summer saw record temperatures of 43°C in Rome and up to 48°C in Sicily and Sardinia. Similar conditions are expected this year, reflecting ongoing climate change.

Along with heatwaves, there is an increased risk of drought in southern regions following a dry winter and spring, IlMeteo notes.

Meanwhile, particularly in northern parts of the country, severe storms are thought increasingly likely to break the intense heatwaves due to the arrival of cooler air from Northern Europe or the Atlantic.

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Elsewhere in Switzerland, a man was found dead in a hotel in Saas-Grund in the southwest canton of Valais, police said, adding that he was probably taken by surprise by a sudden rapid rise in floodwater.

Images published in the online publication 20minuten showed parts of the town covered in a thick layer of mud and rocks.

Another man is also missing in Valais, police said.

In France, three people in their 70s and 80s died in the northeastern Aube region on Saturday when a falling tree crushed the car they were travelling in, the local authority told AFP.

A fourth passenger was in critical care, it added.

Switzerland’s civil security services said “several hundred” people were evacuated in the southern canton of Valais and roads closed after the Rhone and its tributaries overflowed in different locations.

The situation in Valais was “under control” Sunday, Frederic Favre, the official responsible for civil security, told a press conference, but he warned that it would remain “fragile” for the next several days.

Emergency services were assessing the best way to evacuate 300 people who had arrived for a football tournament in the mountain town of Peccia, while almost 70 more were being evacuated from a holiday camp in the village of Mogno.

The poor weather was making rescue work particularly difficult, police had said earlier, with several valleys in the southern cantons of Ticino and Valais near the border with Italy, inaccessible and cut off from the electricity network.

In Ticino, some 400 people — including 40 children from a holiday camp — had to be evacuated from risk areas and taken to civil protection centres.

The federal alert system also said part of the canton was without drinking water.

Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis, who is from Ticino, said the repeated disasters “have touched us deeply”.

It’s the worst flooding experienced in the canton since 2000 when 13 people were killed in a mudslide which destroyed the village of Gondo.

Scientists say climate change driven by human activity is increasing the severity, frequency and length of extreme weather events such as floods and storms.

Italy flooding

In northern Italy, Piedmont and the Aosta Valley also suffered flooding and mudslides, though no deaths were reported.

Firefighters in Piedmont announced Sunday morning that they had carried out 80 operations to rescue people in difficulty.

A mudslide temporarily blocked a regional road to the ski resort of Cervinia in the Aosta Valley, a semi-autonomous region located along the border with France and Switzerland.

A river which burst its banks caused significant damage to the centre of the town where several streets were flooded.

A mudslide blocked access to Cogne, a village of 1,300 people in the Aosta Valley, where 90 millimetres of rainfall was recorded in a six-hour period on Saturday.

At the European football championships in Germany, a match between Germany and Denmark Saturday evening was interrupted for almost half an hour because of heavy rain and lighting.

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