Climate change ups Italy flood risk

(ANSA) - Rome, November 8 - Italy is at risk of flooding due to climate change, according to experts gathered at Rome's Accademia dei Lincei science academy for a conference on adaptation strategies for climate change.
    Hydrologist Alberto Montanari said the extreme weather events that affect Italy the most are those that involve precipitation, whose frequency rather than intensity have increased.
    "The entire country is at risk of flooding, with few exceptions," he said.
    Environmental Ministry General Director Maurizio Pernice said there's a great opportunity to improve risk management with the National Plan for Adaptation to Climate Change, which will be completed by year's end and definitively approved by the middle of 2017.
    Climatologist Filippo Giorgi said the three main consequences of climate change are rising sea levels, drought, and glacier melting and that extreme events like heat waves could become the norm in 50 to 60 years.
    Reducing carbon dioxide emissions is essential for keeping the global temperature in check, said Thomas Stocker, co-chair of Working Group I of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), adding that a "fourth industrial revolution" is needed: "decarbonization".
    He said without any measures to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, the goal of keeping global warming within two degrees Celsius "will be moot by 2035".