hwa_2026_2050

C3S NCP Italian initiative

Heatwaves projections for Italy

The increasing frequency and intensity of extreme temperature events have rapidly sharpened the scientific and public focus on the phenomenon of heatwaves. Therefore, there is a growing need to systematically monitor and model the evolving temporal dynamics, frequency, duration and severity of extreme heat events.

The challenge is to provide a quantitative assessment of the evolution of heatwaves (HWs) across Italy throughout the present century, using a set of metrics widely adopted by the scientific community.

This is one of the challenges faced by the Italian initiative for the National Collaboration Programme of Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S NCP). The initiative, led by ISPRA, promoted the uptake of C3S products within national institutional workflows to provide innovative hydro-climatic services, as well as the use of the European Weather Cloud (EWC) resources. 

For the computation of HW metrics and evolution, ISPRA used a dataset released by Agenzia ItaliaMeteo after some refinements, based on a downscaled projection dataset for Italy developed by CMCC. The dataset consists of daily maximum temperature projections for Italy up to 2100, according to SSP1-2.6 and SSP3-7.0 scenarios, onto a ~5.5km grid. The fine spatial resolution allows to zoom onto specific areas. Areas of interest for the analysis include Italian administrative regions and major cities.

 

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Adequate resources were then granted and allocated on the EWC, through Aeronautica Militare, our focal point for the EWC. Resources used: 1 VM with 32 cores and 32GB memory, 500GB storage, over 6 months (discontinuously).

Several indices analysed have been found not to be an optimal metric to evaluate the heatwaves evolution throughout this century. On the other hand, HWA and ΔT90P return a good estimate of how the intensity of the heatwave events will intensify in the future.

 

Organisations

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ISPRA_logo2
ITALIAMETEO_logo1
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