Overheating, Belluno is the worst city in Italy: plus two degrees in the twenty-first century

Coldiretti states this on the basis of an EdjNet analysis. Belluno leads the ranking that concentrates almost all the Italian cities that have had the greatest rise in temperatures in the Center North: Piombino (+1.7 degrees), Pavia, Piacenza (1.3 degrees), Savona La Spezia, Modena, Genoa , Ancona, Bergamo, Livorno (+1.2 degrees)

BELLUNO. Belluno is the Italian city most affected by overheating with an increase of 2 degrees which is the cause of environmental upheavals such as the melting of glaciers.

This is what Coldiretti says, based on an EdjNet analysis, in expressing condolences for the tragedy of the Marmolada where six mountaineers died and seventeen others are missing due to the detachment of an ice serac between Punta Rocca and Punta Penia.

According to research from the European Data Journalism Network, the Belluno capital is the one that recorded the greatest increase in temperatures in the twenty-first century compared to the average of the twentieth century – explains Coldiretti -, leading a ranking that concentrates almost all the Italian cities that have had the greatest rise in temperatures: Piombino (+1.7 degrees), Pavia, Piacenza (1.3 degrees), Savona La Spezia, Modena, Genoa, Ancona, Bergamo, Livorno (+1.2 degrees) .

As well as on the fields, the effects of climate change are therefore also felt on the mountains – underlines Coldiretti – in a 2022 where the January-May period is in sixth place among the hottest ever, according to a Coldiretti analysis on Noaa data. .

The result is a profound change in the mountain landscape that involves both the structure of the glaciers and that of the crops. In fact, the fate of the Italian food valley also depends on the glacial basins of the Alps, where more than 1/3 of the national agricultural production and half of the Made in Italy breeding are born, today hit by a devastating drought.

Glaciers – points out Coldiretti – are a fundamental part of the water and irrigation cycle, guaranteeing the resources to face increasingly hot summer seasons where the availability of water is strategic to continue to guarantee the national production of food.

But overheating has also changed the distribution of the crops themselves as evidenced by the fact that over time – Coldiretti specifies – a significant shift in the area of ​​some crops such as the olive tree that has reached the Alps has occurred. It is in fact in the province of Sondrio, beyond the 46th parallel, is the last northern frontier of Italian olive oil.

In the last ten years – explains Coldiretti – the cultivation of olive trees on the sunniest ridges of the Valtellina mountains has gone from zero to about ten thousand plants, on almost 30 thousand square meters of land.

But the heat has also changed the distribution on the territory of the vineyards which tend to expand – concludes Coldiretti – upwards with the presence of the vine at almost 1200 meters high as in the municipality of Morgex and La Salle, in the province of Aosta, where the grapes for the Blanc de Morgex et de La Salle Dop are produced from the highest vines in Europe.