Drought as a consequence of climate change

Just as Paolo Virzì’s comedy Drought, about the River Tiber running dry as the result of a climate crisis, hit Italian cinemas, the latest forecasts by meteorologists at Global Energy and Commodity Management (GECM), in partnership with the climatology team at Administration, Finance and Control (AFC) Holding, have revealed that even though rainfall has returned to Italy, the water scarcity experienced over the last few months is likely to continue. Unfortunately, this is no longer an exceptional situation but rather the sign of an ongoing global climate change trend that will also have an impact on the energy front. “We need to distinguish between hydrology and precipitation: precipitation has returned, but we have a cumulative deficit that will take time and more rain to eliminate. And we’ll need a lot of snow, too,” says Enel Global Trading meteorologist Marco Formenton. Summers are getting hotter Under normal conditions, the summer climate in southern Europe is determined by the interaction of two main factors. The first is the Azores anticyclone, which draws air from the Atlantic Ocean that’s mild at ground level and cool at altitude towards the center of the continent and Italy. The second is the African anticyclone, which brings warm air from the Sahara to southern Europe. Historically, when things are balanced, the two anticyclones alternate. However, in recent years, the warm air coming in from Africa has begun to dominate, resulting in heat waves, higher average temperatures, sultry conditions and far less precipitation. Because it is very hot at high altitude too, the desert air prevents storms from forming and also makes breezes much lighter. The result is that temperatures stay very high, with maximum temperatures that often exceed 40°C. To make matters worse, as the desert air crosses the Mediterranean, it rapidly picks up water vapor and so brings a lot of humidity to our areas, resulting in significant cloud cover and sultry heat. “Since the early 2000s, we’ve been seeing more and more of these episodes, and they’re also lasting longer, as well as covering larger geographical areas,” continues Formenton. “For several years now, in Scandinavia, they’ve been recording temperatures in excess of 30 °C, which is truly exceptional for them.” An arid future ahead? There’s more to it than just heat waves. The high temperatures of the last few months were also accompanied by very, very little rain. In the first seven months of 2022 in Milan, it rained 60% less than the historical average, and climate projections indicate that we’re already in the middle of a decades-long trend of increasing periods of drought. With a 2°C increase in global temperatures, water scarcity (when water resources cannot meet demand) in the Mediterranean area could affect 54% of the population: approximately 120 million people. If the increase in temperatures reaches +3°C, agricultural drought could rise by 40%, affecting 170 million people. These are very plausible scenarios, particularly here in Italy, which is a global warming hotspot. “Efficiency measures are already available to manage water shortages, including civil and agricultural water monitoring and use restrictions. But these may not be enough to tackle more severe future scenarios. So we need to start building more structured adaptation strategies to meet the challenges that the climate scenarios have in store for us,” warns Laura Di Bernardo, Climate Change Analyst - Group Strategy, Economics and Scenario Planning, AFC, Enel. Hydroelectricity – with no water Clearly, global warming’s impact on precipitation is not confined solely to the summer months. According to a recent study, in the last 40 years snow cover across the world (the Alps included) has decreased by an average of 15 days. This lack of snowy precipitation in winter is one of the fundamental factors driving the loss of the natural and artificial water reserves that power hydroelectric power stations, including our own. So we’ve found ourselves facing an increasingly severe scarcity of the very resource the stations need to work, resulting in a drop in electricity production just as demand has risen. These scenarios, which we’re all experiencing firsthand, should refocus attention on (and increase resources being dedicated to) the energy transition. Implementing and accelerating the energy transition will allow us to intervene directly on the global and local causes of climate change and its consequences, including for the electricity sector.

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Drought as a consequence of climate change