Luca Mercalli will be the special guest at Oltre le Vette with the Dolomites

The Foundation, in conjunction with the cultural festival Oltre le Vette, is organising a meeting with the famous Italian meteorologist Luca Mercalli on 14 October. The role of the mountains and the Dolomites in the diagnosis of global warming will be subject of the talk.

The event will take place at Belluno’s municipal theatre at 9:00 pm.

The mountains, sentinel of the changing climate

Guest and presenter for the evening will be Luca Mercalli, climatologist, founder and editor of the magazine Nimbus and president of the Italian Meteorological Society, the national association set up in 1865. He has been studying the climate and glaciers in the Alps for thirty years.

Mercalli will illustrate how an analysis of the changes in the shape of glaciers can help us make an early diagnosis of global warming.

High altitude environments are particularly sensitive to climate change. Minor changes which would barely be noticed in towns and cities, can alter the mountain landscape in just a couple of years: melting glaciers, less snowfall for winter sports, change in the flow rate of rivers and the availability of water for farming and hydroelectricity, the condition and proliferation of the vegetation and fauna. The mountains, and the Alps and Dolomites in particular, are a great open-air laboratory where we can detect the early signs of changes in the climate and environment brought about by man. And let’s hope they also give us food for thought and can drive innovation to find solutions.

Luca Mercalli

Luca Mercalli has been a consultant for the European Union, working on strategies to help adapt to climatic change in the mountains. He teaches sustainability in schools and universities in Italy, Switzerland and France and practises what he preaches as he lives in Valsusa in a solar-powered house, drives an electric car and grows his own vegetables. He has appeared on “Che tempo che fa” with Fabio Fazio on RAI3 and the well-known programme “Scala Mercalli”. A columnist in La Stampa, he has written thousands of articles and spoken at more than 1600 conferences open to the general public, as well as seminars in schools and universities. He is a truly pioneering innovator on environmental communication both in Italy and abroad. His books, published by the leading Italian publishing houses, include: Filosofia delle nuvole, Che tempo che farà, Viaggi nel tempo che fa, Prepariamoci (also presented to a packed audience in the “Bianchi” room in Belluno during the 2012 edition of Oltre le Vette) and Clima bene comune.