Venice? In a hundred years she could be submerged. This is in fact the most alarming of the results that emerged from a research carried out by Enea on the water level in the Mediterranean Sea, compared to a time span of the last 1000 years. Now, the Mediterranean has been shown to have risen about 30cm in the last 1.000 years compared to a more than threefold increase projected over the next 100 years by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The research on variations in the level of the Mediterranean coordinated by ENEA demonstrates how the forecasts for 2100 by the IPCC represent a clear acceleration in the rise in sea levels, mainly due to climate change. The study, just published in the scientific journal Quaternary International by Elsevier, was carried out together with researchers from INGV and the Universities of Rome "La Sapienza", Bari "Aldo Moro", Lecce, Catania, Haifa (Israel), Paris and Marseilles (France).
"The research examined the rise of our sea over a period of time never studied before," explains Fabrizio Antonioli of ENEA's Climatic and Impact Modeling Laboratory, which coordinated the study.
“In Italy – concludes Antonioli – there are 33 areas at risk due to the increase in sea level. The largest areas are located on the northern coast of the Adriatic Sea between Trieste and Ravenna, other particularly vulnerable areas are the coastal plains of Versilia, Fiumicino, the Piane Pontina and Fondi, Sele and Volturno, the coastal area of Catania and those of Cagliari and Oristano. The maximum increase in water level is expected in the Northern Adriatic where the sum of the rising sea and the falling coast will reach values between 90 and 140 centimetres".
