The number of major Italian cities
put on red alert by the health ministry due to the intense
heatwave the country is suffering will rise from 17 on Monday to
20 on Tuesday and 23 on Wednesday.
That means that only four of the nation's 27 biggest cities will
not be on red alert.
A city is on red alert when the heat is so intense it poses a
threat to the whole population, not just vulnerable groups such
as the sick, the elderly and small children.
On Tuesday Ancona, Bologna, Bolzano, Brescia, Cagliari,
Campobasso, Florence, Frosinone, Latina, Messina, Naples,
Palermo, Perugia, Pescara, Rieti, Rome, Trieste, Venice, Verona
and Viterbo will be on red alert.
On Wednesday Bari, Catania, Civitavecchia and Turin will join
them, while Bolzano drops down the yellow.
Milan and Reggio Calabria will be a notch down on orange alert
on Wednesday with Bolzano and Genoa on yellow.
Temperatures are forecast to climb as high as 47° Celsius in
areas of southern Sardinia this week, 45 or 46° in Sicily and
45° in the province of Foggia, in Puglia.
In Rome, which The Times has called "The Infernal City" because
of the heat it is suffering, temperatures are expected to climb
to 42 or 43° on Tuesday.
A study coordinated by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health
and published in the Nature Medicine journal last week estimated
that over 18,000 people died in Italy due to the intense heat
the nation endured last summer.
Scientists say the climate crisis caused by human greenhouse gas
emissions is making extreme weather events such as heat waves,
drought, supercharged storms and flooding more frequent and more
intense.
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