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CLIMATE CRISIS

Blackouts, water shortages, wildfires: How extreme heat is hitting Sicily

Italian officials held crisis talks on Monday over how to manage blackouts in Sicily that have left hundreds of thousands of people without electricity and water for days during a searing heatwave.

Published: 24 July 2023 19:10 CEST
Blackouts, water shortages, wildfires: How extreme heat is hitting Sicily
A prolonged heatwave has peaked in northern Italy but temperatures remain above 40C across much of the south. (Photo by Loic VENANCE / AFP)

The head of Italy’s civil protection agency, Nello Musumeci, led the meeting in Catania, where the local mayor said the city had been “brought to its knees” by rolling power cuts.

A heatwave that has baked southern Europe over the past week has yet to ease in southern Italy. In Sicily, the civil protection agency reported a temperature of 47.6 degrees Celsius in Catania on Monday.

Sicily was also on high alert for wildfires on Monday as the intense heat created ideal conditions for blazes to spread on the island.

“We are paying on the one hand for climate change, to which we should have been paying more attention for several years, and on the other for infrastructure that does not appear entirely adequate to the new context,” Musumeci said according to Italian news agencies.

Catania and surrounding areas have suffered power cuts since Thursday, with more than 500,000 people affected, a spokesman for municipality told AFP.

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Power cuts affected Rome and other southern Italian cities last week as Italy saw a new energy use record amid the heatwave.

In a statement on Sunday, Sicily’s energy supplier e-distribuzione, the distribution arm of energy giant Enel, blamed heat damage to underground cables.

“We find ourselves operating in conditions of exceptional climatic emergency,” where the temperature of the asphalt on roads has reached 50 degrees, it said.

“This, if added to the high humidity, does not allow the correct dissipation of heat with consequent damage to the underground cables.”

It said it was working to boost capacity and had deployed hundreds of technicians to address the issue.

The power cuts have stopped water pumps from operating, with between 200,000 and 300,000 people affected, although the situation was resolved on Monday morning, water firm Sidra said.

Local authorities have set up air conditioned rooms for the elderly and other vulnerable people, including the homeless, and have urged people to moderate their use of air conditioners at home to avoid exacerbating the issue.

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CLIMATE CRISIS

‘Extreme’ climate blamed for world’s worst wine harvest in 62 years

World wine production dropped 10 percent last year, the biggest fall in more than six decades, because of "extreme" climate changes, the body that monitors the trade said on Thursday.

Published: 26 April 2024 08:48 CEST
'Extreme' climate blamed for world's worst wine harvest in 62 years

“Extreme environmental conditions” including droughts, fires and other problems with climate were mostly to blame for the drastic fall, said the International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV) that covers nearly 50 wine producing countries.

Australia and Italy suffered the worst, with 26 and 23 percent drops. Spain lost more than a fifth of its production. Harvests in Chile and South Africa were down by more than 10 percent.

The OIV said the global grape harvest was the worst since 1961, and worse even than its early estimates in November.

In further bad news for winemakers, customers drank three per cent less wine in 2023, the French-based intergovernmental body said.

Director John Barker highlighted “drought, extreme heat and fires, as well as heavy rain causing flooding and fungal diseases across major northern and southern hemisphere wine producing regions.”

Although he said climate problems were not solely to blame for the drastic fall, “the most important challenge that the sector faces is climate change.

“We know that the grapevine, as a long-lived plant cultivated in often vulnerable areas, is strongly affected by climate change,” he added.

France bucked the falling harvest trend, with a four percent rise, making it by far the world’s biggest wine producer.

Wine consumption last year was however at its lowest level since 1996, confirming a fall-off over the last five years, according to the figures.

The trend is partly due to price rises caused by inflation and a sharp fall in wine drinking in China – down a quarter – due to its economic slowdown.

The Portuguese, French and Italians remain the world’s biggest wine drinkers per capita.

Barker said the underlying decrease in consumption is being “driven by demographic and lifestyle changes. But given the very complicated influences on global demand at the moment,” it is difficult to know whether the fall will continue.

“What is clear is that inflation is the dominant factor affecting demand in 2023,” he said.

Land given over to growing grapes to eat or for wine fell for the third consecutive year to 7.2 million hectares (17.7 million acres).

But India became one of the global top 10 grape producers for the first time with a three percent rise in the size of its vineyards.

France, however, has been pruning its vineyards back slightly, with its government paying winemakers to pull up vines or to distil their grapes.

The collapse of the Italian harvest to its lowest level since 1950 does not necessarily mean there will be a similar contraction there, said Barker.

Between floods and hailstones, and damp weather causing mildew in the centre and south of the country, the fall was “clearly linked to meteorological conditions”, he said.

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