Italy’s most celebrated coastal paradise suddenly finds itself fragile, caught in the grip of an environmental change that threatens its very survival. The villages of Monterosso and Vernazza, beating hearts of the Cinque Terre National Park, risk being partially submerged due to relentless marine progression.
The scientific alarm was launched following the publication in the international journal Remote Sensing of a substantial research entitled “The First Relative Sea Level Rise and Storm Surges Scenarios up to 2150 CE for the Coasts of Monterosso and Vernazza, Cinque Terre National Park (Liguria, Italy)“. The dossier maps the growing vulnerability of coastal stretches, redefining the boundaries of danger for tourism and mobility in Liguria.
Precision technology applied to IPCC climate models
The project is the result of the work of a multidisciplinary team that combined the forces of the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV) and the Institute of Environmental Geology and Geoengineering of the CNR (IGAG), supported by the University of Basilicata, the Park Authority and academic partners located in Thessaloniki, Paris and Nijmegen.
To develop future flooding models, the experts cross-referenced very high resolution topographic and bathymetric data with tide gauge time series, geodetic field surveys and numerical simulations of wave motions. This complex IT framework was calibrated on the global climate projections provided by the IPCC, revealing a trend of sea level increase that was anything but stationary.
Lethal centimeters and giant waves ready to hit the railway
The numerical estimates described by the research coordinators, Marco Anzidei of INGV and Alessandro Bosman of CNR, indicate that by 2150 the average water level in the Ligurian sector will increase by between 0.60 and 1.17 metres. This geographical mutation will reduce small beaches to a minimum and will undermine the port piers located at low altitude.
The situation will become catastrophic in conjunction with extreme weather events: calculations on wave run-up predict peaks exceeding 13 meters in height during the most violent storms. A similar impact on the coast would jeopardize the strategic infrastructure of the local railway line, the only connecting artery that unites the villages of the coast.
The cost of inertia and urgent countermeasures to save the territory
The urgency of launching mitigation plans is also supported by the heavy economic considerations raised by the European Central Bank, which estimates the costs linked to the failure to manage the advance of the seas within the European Union by 2080 at 500 billion euros per year.
Italy, characterized by a very strong anthropization of its coasts, must move in advance so as not to lose its heritage. Precisely for this reason this study becomes a fundamental territorial planning tool for Ligurian municipalities, urging administrations to plan the adaptation of port docks, the restructuring of urban drainage systems and the strengthening of protective barriers to defend tourist services.
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