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Six people, including a British tycoon, are missing after a tornado struck their luxury yacht off the coast of Sicily, at the tip of the Italian peninsula on August 19, according to the Italian Coast Guard. Such tornadoes in the Mediterranean will only increase in the future, as per studies.
There were 22 people on board the yacht, including 10 crew members. Lynch is among six people missing — Four UK nations and two Americans, according to the Italian Coast Guard.
The yacht, the British-flagged Bayesian, was anchored about a half a mile from the port of Porticello on the Sicilian coast. It was struck by the tornado at 5 am, causing it to sink. Fifteen people were rescued while one person died.
According to 3B meteo, a privately-owned meteorological company that offers weather, climate and environmental forecasts, the most tornado-affected regions in Italy include Veneto (especially Vicenza, Treviso, and Venice) and Friuli Venezia Giulia along the Adriatic Sea coast.
They are followed by the plains of Lombardy and Emilia-Romagna, eastern Piedmont, Liguria, Sicily, Puglia, Lazio, Tuscany, and Campania.
According to a 2022 study conducted by the Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate of the National Research Council (CNR-ISAC) of the National Research Council of Italy, the central regions overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea (Lazio in particular) are more affected by strong tornadoes. The Tyrrhenian is the part of the Mediterranean that flanks the western coast of the Italian peninsula.
Other areas particularly affected in Italy, according to this study, are the south-eastern regions (Puglia-Calabria) and the Po Valley in northern Italy.
Tornadoes affect the Tyrrhenian coast more since “average atmospheric conditions are characterized by a low pressure area over north-western Italy, both at altitude and on the surface, and by south-westerly ground winds capable of transporting warmer-than-average air towards the affected regions”.
The authors noted that the Mediterranean basin is considered a hotspot for climate change and, as a consequence, is becoming more exposed to extreme weather events.
“Ongoing global warming suggests that these thermodynamic conditions will be exacerbated in the future, possibly affecting the intensity of Mediterranean tornado occurrences; a more in-depth analysis is however needed to assess the possible interconnections between tornado intensity/frequency and climate change effects,” they added.
Last year, on September 10, Storm Daniel, a Mediterranean hurricane or ‘Medicane’, devastated the Libyan city of Derna. There were over 5,000 deaths in the area while between 10,000 and 100,000 people were missing.
Down To Earth had reported then that Medicanes are likely to increase in number due to a warming climate.
Meanwhile, the authors of the 2022 paper noted “it is possible to successfully predict high values of specific indicators of atmospheric instability and deep convection typical of tornadoes, as well as to correctly simulate the structure of the convective cells responsible for the genesis of such events”.
They added that “an integrated modeling/observational meteorological system dedicated to the monitoring and operational forecasting of such intense phenomena” is needed.
