The unusually hot summer along
the peninsula is accelerating the melt of snow and ice in
glaciers high in the Italian Alps, experts warned Monday.
At the summer's mid-point, the amount of melt is already at
levels normally not seen until the end of summer, said the
Foundation for Secure Mountains, based in Italy's Aosta Valley.
It has been surveying a number of glaciers including Le
Petit Grapillon on Mont Blanc, Rutor on La Thuile, and Grand
Vallon Timorion on Grand Paradise.
2015 will be "a year of great loss of glaciers Aosta
Valley," said the foundation.
The scalding-hot temperatures were expected to push the
thermometer up as high as 41 degrees Celsius on Sardinia on
Tuesday, made even worse by high levels of humidity, said
weather specialists at website 3bmeteo.com.
And that is only a first taste of what is likely to hang
around Italy for the rest of the week, as a new African weather
system blows in, they added.
Italian temperatures in July set new records "and August
seems to want to follow in the same footprints," the 3bmeteo.com
specialists.
Across Tuscany, Umbria, Lazio and Sardinia, the heat wave
will last as long as eight more days - almost to mid-August.
The hottest cities are likely to include Turin, Milan,
Verona, Trento, Bologna, Florence, Perugia, Rome and Nuoro.
The heat wave had badly hit Italian agricultural and
fisheries output.
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