A-Infos (en) Sicilia Libertaria 2-24: Alerci special - SICILY: HEAT AND DESERTIFICATION (ca, de, it, pt, tr) [machine translation]

If it is true that the environmental issue seems to be at the center of 
public debate, in reality it seems that every day the problem confuses 
public opinions more and more. In the positions of politicians and 
decision-makers we move from irrationalism, to denialism, to, 
conversely, blind catastrophism: even those who still try to follow the 
evolution of this debate have no real perception of what is about to 
happen. ---- We all know that, for at least four decades, the climate 
has been in a vortex of unstoppable changes. Those who still remember 
remember that already in the 1980s, studies on the effects of greenhouse 
gases had left the rooms of the academy and began to be part of the 
public debate. We talked about it at school, during science lessons. It 
was talked about every now and then on the news. And the first 
predictions began to circulate about what we should expect in the more 
or less immediate future. For the entire southern Mediterranean area, 
there was immediate talk of a progressive reduction in rainfall up to a 
frightening percentage of 30%: an environment that was already in a very 
precarious state of equilibrium, with dry summers, a place close to very 
few hundreds of kilometers to the largest desert on the planet, this 
already unhappy land would undergo an almost apocalyptic change.

Forty years after those predictions, we have arrived at the point. 
Despite a certain delay compared to the times indicated for the foreseen 
scenarios, probably linked to the inertia of the climatic systems of the 
mare nostrum. If, in fact, in the northern regions the climate change 
has been devastating for twenty years already, with the Alpine glaciers 
in very rapid retreat (some have lost half their volume) mainly due to 
unprecedented summer temperatures for those latitudes, in the south up 
until the ten of the year 2000, we had had a relative respite: just 
enough rainy winters, even heavy snow like we hadn't seen for a long 
time (just think of the Arctic waves of 2015, 2017, 2019). But it was a 
temporary effect which among other things made us understand, if it were 
still necessary, the difference between meteorological events and 
climate cycles: if for one, two, three years, but even ten, it rains 
more or snows more ( or less) nothing matters compared to longer-term 
averages, specifically thirty-year climatology.

And then it turns out that those scientists, who forty or more years ago 
spoke to us about the greenhouse effect, were right, indeed: if we take 
the climate annals of the stations in internal Sicily as a reference we 
can record an increase of three degrees in the average, minimum values 
and maximums. That's right, three degrees, because an increase of just 
one degree in the average global temperature can mean an increase of 
even five degrees or more in the average temperatures of individual 
areas. So it's still going well, but unfortunately we have time to see 
worse. In fact, 2021 seems to have all the characteristics to mark a new 
leap forward in the Mediterranean climate crisis: from 2021 until the 
last summer of 2023, we are witnessing the definitive affirmation of the 
new Mediterranean climate. First of all, the new European heat record 
was established in Sicily, the 48.8 degrees of 11 July 2021 in the 
Syracuse area. But ultimately these peaks have always been there. What 
is changing the nature of our climate is instead the phenomenon of 
persistence. One of the most studied effects of climate change is in 
fact related to the slowdown of currents, both atmospheric and marine, 
with the consequent establishment of the same meteorological 
configurations for weeks and even months in the same areas. In 
particular, the European summer is now prey to a new type of 
anticyclone, with a strong Saharan origin, triggered by the descent into 
the nearby Atlantic of those cold influxes which in the past flowed 
quickly at high latitudes and which now sink slowly, calling us, day 
after day, increasingly warmer air. Well, precisely since that terrible 
summer of 2021, the phenomena just described trigger values at altitude 
(measured by specific aerial surveys in the free atmosphere, at an 
altitude of approximately 1500 meters above sea level) of 28-30 degrees 
compared to 25 in the worst hot waves before warming, and, above all, a 
persistence that if in the past was 3-7 days now reaches 12-17 days. 
With what effects? We have seen it: daytime temperatures of 38 degrees 
at 1000 meters above sea level for weeks, uninterruptedly, and values 
above 44-45 degrees in the valley bottoms (it should be noted that these 
heat waves, due to the phenomenon of compression of the air masses 
linked to very high pressure values cause proportionately higher values 
on the mountains than on the coasts).

The summers of 2022 and 2023 were no different, after all. Last summer, 
for example, despite there being no new absolute records, was 
characterized by the longest hot wave ever recorded since the existence 
of a modern network of weather stations in Sicily, lasting 18 days. 
During these episodes, trees lost up to half of their leaves even though 
they were very resistant to drought, not to mention the suffering of the 
high altitude beech forests.

Faced with this scenario, even abundant rainfall, even abundant snow 
which is still not lacking, can do little to guarantee the survival of 
ecosystems. In fact, summer is the season that decides the long-term 
climate trend, not winter; even cold and rainy autumns and winters 
cannot guarantee ecosystems in the presence of summers that last until 
November and with daytime values that have gone from thirty to forty 
degrees in a short time. Imagine if, at the same time, rain and snow 
decrease, as is happening for example this year and as will continue to 
happen. Yet we knew it, they told us, and they said it based precisely 
on the study of the greenhouse effect, demonstrating that the warming is 
of an anthropic nature, because it is manifesting itself in the ways 
predicted by simulations on the anthropic alteration of the gases 
present in the atmosphere , not of who knows what other natural 
variables (which may exist).

We must then remember our duties, Vittorini would say. On the one hand 
it is essential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions immediately, with 
inevitable sacrifices and costs, which however should not always burden 
only the weak links in the value chains. We must do it first and 
certainly not take as an alibi the behavior of the so-called big 
polluters such as China and India, who in fact are not easy to ask not 
to do what we have always done for centuries. And on the other hand we 
must think about surviving, preparing actions to mitigate the effects of 
these changes which, even if we utopistically stopped putting gases into 
the atmosphere tonight, will now be triggered for decades or centuries. 
Global warming is already revolutionizing our lives, the products of 
Mediterranean agriculture are less and less abundant, the olive tree, a 
symbolic plant of our culture, produces less and less. We must not 
change by thinking about 2050 or 2100, but simply about last August, 
when the energy distribution networks were liquefying in Sicilian cities.

Always remembering that we live a few hundred kilometers from the 
largest desert in the world.

Luca Alerci

https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
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