Venice flooding: understanding, prediction capabilities, and future projections
Venice flooding: understanding, prediction capabilities, and future projections
Editor(s): Piero Lionello, Georg Umgiesser, Davide Zanchettin, and Robert Nicholls
The city of Venice and its lagoon represent great historic, ecologic, and economic interest. The most known and debated symptom of the frailty of the Venetian lagoon system are the periodic flooding events that afflict Venice, locally referred to as “acqua alta”. An increased impact of storm surges on Venice has been observed in recent decades, and the future rise of sea level as a consequence of global warming may lead to dramatic impacts on both the historical centre and the surrounding ecosystem. Local changes such as subsidence must also be considered. A large amount of scientific literature has been devoted at understanding the dynamics leading to the flooding of Venice, predicting the timing and intensity of the events and describing changes in their frequency and intensity under future global warming scenarios.

This special issue aims to critically discuss the current understanding of the Venice flooding phenomenon. It is structured with a focus on “its meteorological and climatic precursors, its prediction, and its historical and expected future variations under a globally changing climate”. The synthesis is oriented toward clarifying consolidated knowledge, highlighting gaps of knowledge as well as identifying major opportunities for progress. This special issue is composed of three review papers, addressing three different and complementary aspects of the hazards causing the flood of Venice. Review paper 1 describes the tools that have been developed and are currently used for the prediction of the sea level events, which are used for warning the population and will be needed for managing the movable barriers to prevent future floods. Review paper 2 describes the factors leading to extreme events, their past evolution, and expected future levels under a climate change perspective. Review paper 3 considers the evolution of the mean relative sea level, whose past increase and future expected positive rate are the major causes of the increasing flood hazard level. The editorial provides an introduction to the three reviews, where the critical issues posed by the floods of Venice are summarized and the basic meteorological and oceanographic processes and factors involved (that are common to the three reviews) are introduced.

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01 Sep 2021
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Venice flooding and sea level: past evolution, present issues, and future projections (introduction to the special issue)
Piero Lionello, Robert J. Nicholls, Georg Umgiesser, and Davide Zanchettin
Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci., 21, 2633–2641, https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-21-2633-2021,https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-21-2633-2021, 2021
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01 Sep 2021
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Sea-level rise in Venice: historic and future trends (review article)
Davide Zanchettin, Sara Bruni, Fabio Raicich, Piero Lionello, Fanny Adloff, Alexey Androsov, Fabrizio Antonioli, Vincenzo Artale, Eugenio Carminati, Christian Ferrarin, Vera Fofonova, Robert J. Nicholls, Sara Rubinetti, Angelo Rubino, Gianmaria Sannino, Giorgio Spada, Rémi Thiéblemont, Michael Tsimplis, Georg Umgiesser, Stefano Vignudelli, Guy Wöppelmann, and Susanna Zerbini
Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci., 21, 2643–2678, https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-21-2643-2021,https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-21-2643-2021, 2021
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01 Sep 2021
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The prediction of floods in Venice: methods, models and uncertainty (review article)
Georg Umgiesser, Marco Bajo, Christian Ferrarin, Andrea Cucco, Piero Lionello, Davide Zanchettin, Alvise Papa, Alessandro Tosoni, Maurizio Ferla, Elisa Coraci, Sara Morucci, Franco Crosato, Andrea Bonometto, Andrea Valentini, Mirko Orlić, Ivan D. Haigh, Jacob Woge Nielsen, Xavier Bertin, André Bustorff Fortunato, Begoña Pérez Gómez, Enrique Alvarez Fanjul, Denis Paradis, Didier Jourdan, Audrey Pasquet, Baptiste Mourre, Joaquín Tintoré, and Robert J. Nicholls
Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci., 21, 2679–2704, https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-21-2679-2021,https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-21-2679-2021, 2021
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01 Sep 2021
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Extreme floods of Venice: characteristics, dynamics, past and future evolution (review article)
Piero Lionello, David Barriopedro, Christian Ferrarin, Robert J. Nicholls, Mirko Orlić, Fabio Raicich, Marco Reale, Georg Umgiesser, Michalis Vousdoukas, and Davide Zanchettin
Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci., 21, 2705–2731, https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-21-2705-2021,https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-21-2705-2021, 2021
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