Italy activates a “red alert” in 16 cities due to the heat wave

Italy’s heat wave has spread across the peninsula, and 16 cities, including Rome, issued a red alert on Friday in the face of 40-degree heat and increasing fires.

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In Milan, the capital of Lombardy, it is feared that the temperature will reach 40 ° C with tropical nights reaching 27 ° C, which is unusual, as well as in Bologna and Rome (39 ° C). The city of Pavia, on Thursday, broke records at 39.6 degrees Celsius.

The specialized page ilmeteo.it explained that Italy “is about to touch the maximum strength of the African anticyclone Apocalypse 4800”, referring to the zero temperature level located at an altitude of 4800 meters. Therefore, temperatures in no part of the territory will not drop below zero, not even in the Italian Alps.

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And ilmeteo.it noted that “for three consecutive months, May, June and July, a climatic anomaly was recorded, with temperatures two or three degrees above the seasonal average.”

This temperature anomaly is expected to persist into early August, exacerbating the drought and sparking fires across the peninsula. Firefighters carried out dozens of interventions Thursday against the fires.

The fire spread to a vast area of ​​Tuscany, near Massarosa, in the center of the country, where 860 hectares were burned and 1,000 people had to be evacuated. The origin of the disaster could have been by criminals and Luca’s trial opened an investigation.

According to the European specialized monitoring service Copernicus, fires have devoured 27,571 hectares in Italy so far in 2022, compared to 39,904 in France, 19,651 in Spain, 149,324 in Romania and 48,106 in Portugal.

The wildfires that have raged across Europe in recent weeks have affected an area larger than what was recorded in the whole of 2021, according to Copernicus. In the 27 countries of the European Union, a total of 517,881 hectares have been destroyed since the beginning of the year, according to calculations made up to July 16.