“Normally it should rain once every one or two weeks,” says Mantovani, “but now it hasn’t rained for three months.”
The problems start, however, in the mountains, where snowfall has been at its lowest for 20 years measuring 50 per cent less than the seasonal average.
The glaciers of the Alps, which act as reservoirs to feed the river, are also shrinking each year. On Monte Viso, a mountain close to the French border where the Po River originates, the permafrost is melting and causing chunks of rock to crumble away.
The situation has set alarm bells ringing about
the effects climate change could have on an area so heavily dependent upon the river’s waters.
This season has already been a stark warning that the warming planet may turn Italy's fertile farmlands and nutrient-rich Delta into a salty wasteland, while putting hundreds of thousands of livelihoods at risk. “It is a 360-degree disaster,” says Mantovani.
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