The best of climate science is at the CMCC

This article is taken from the Italian Tech special on newsstands from 4 May with Repubblica, dedicated to research and excellence centers in Italy.
All images are by Matteo Capone/Contrasto.

The blue of the sea, the yellow of the sun. Even if Lecce is a few tens of kilometers from the coast, its colours, that of the windswept sky and the local stone of which the historic center is made, are Mediterranean colors par excellence. And it is no coincidence that the main Italian research center dedicated to climate changeand in particular to their effects on the Mare Nostrum, has chosen the capital of Salento as its headquarters.
The Euro-Mediterranean Center for Climate Change has been here since its foundation, in 2005 (the funding used for the start-up required investment in the South), but since last summer it has headquarters completely new, from which the activities of the other national offices are coordinated: Bologna, Venice, Milan, Viterbo, Caserta, Sassari.

The truth is that the Cmcc was born to put together the climate science Italian, regardless of whether it was done in universities or other institutions. And to give scholars opportunities and tools (especially supercomputers) that universities may not be able to afford. The best of climate science thus merged into the CMCC, without abandoning the institutions of origin.

The climatologist Antonio Navarra, for example, continues to teach atmospheric physics at the University of Bologna, but at the same time he is the president of the Foundation which administers the Centre. The Economist Charles Carrara, former rector of Ca’ Foscari in Venice and member of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is a pillar of the CMCC. Another founding father, Richard Valentini, professor of forest ecology at the University of Tuscia and member of the IPCC when the UN structure was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 together with former US vice president Al Gore. Among its members there is also the climatologist Paola Mercogliano, who from 2025 will lead the Italian Society for Climate Science.

And a sort of spin off of the CMCC is theEuropean Institute of Economics and the Environmentfocused precisely on the climatic repercussions of Climate change, a study center based in Milan directed by Massimo Tavoniprofessor at the Polytechnic of the Lombard capital.
In the 3,300 m² of the new headquarters in Lecce, hundreds of Italian and foreign researchers alternate, studying global warming and its possible consequences with a multidisciplinary approach. Overall, in the various locations, more than 260 people work at CMCC, 44% of whom are women and about 52% are under 40.

“You make a career here very quickly”, explains Riccardo Valentini, now a member of the Strategic Committee. “The young people have all been placed in managerial roles, while we “old” ones have carved out a role of direction”. A multidisciplinary task force involving experts in oceanography and sea modeling, from the global ocean to regional (Mediterranean, Black Sea) and coastal scales, experts in advanced computing, data science, machine learning and Artificial Intelligence, and experts in impacts of climate change on terrestrial ecosystems and on the agro-forestry sector.
But the heart of the CMCC is not in the meeting rooms on the ground floor, nor in the bright open spaces on the first floor: it actually beats in the basement, where, in the two refrigerated rooms divided by the central corridor, it grinds data Juno. It’s the ultimate supercomputer installed in 2022, a few days after the inauguration of the new headquarters, it has a total computing power of approximately 1,134 TFlops and is based on the new generation of Intel processors (third generation Intel Xeon Scalable processor) and on the latest generation of Nvidia gpu .
Juno obviously does paired with Zeus, the supercomputer located inside the Ecotekne University Campus in Lecce and composed of 348 Lenovo SD530 biprocessor nodes (for a total of 12,528 cores) interconnected by means of an InfiniBand EDR network.
The high-performance computing structure is capable of delivering a total power of 1,202 TFlops. Zeus and Juno interact with each other and make the Supercomputing Center of the CMCC the largest computing facility in Italy − and among the most advanced in Europe − dedicated exclusively to research on climate change and its interactions with society and economic systems. And they are the “tools of the trade” of the CMCC scientists, who, simplifying, do not make measurements in the field, but process, thanks to supercomputers, the data collected by others to predict how the climate will change and what effects these changes will have on the planet and on human activities.

It is no coincidence that the Foundation is divided into 11 divisions, ranging from “climate simulations and predictions” to “impact on agriculture, forests and ecosystem services”, from “economic models for a sustainable Earth” to “ocean modelling”.
“Interdisciplinarity is CMCC’s greatest success. We have believed in it since its foundation and we have managed to put it into practice”, says Valentini. “The climate crisis cannot be tackled only with the tools of atmospheric physics or with the study of ocean currents. The changes underway involve society, biodiversity, the economy, infrastructures. We have brought together experts in all these disciplines and we are a unique example in Europe, with perhaps the exception of the Potsdam Climate Institute (PIK), led by Johan Rockstrom”.

In short, a scientific community that deals with climate science in its broadest sense. “This allows us to provide important services for Italian and international institutions”, continues Valentini. “For example, we process the data collected on the Black Sea by satellites of the European constellation Copernicus”.

Now that she’s coming of age, the CMCC can say that it has achieved the objectives of the founders: to create a center of excellence in Italy for the integrated study of issues relating to climate change. By now the Center based in Lecce is an international point of reference for climate science. Since 2006 it has hosted the National Focal Point of the IPCC, guaranteeing a meeting point between the UN Panel, the scientific community and national public opinion, in order to encourage the mutual exchange of information on ongoing activities. And there is no shortage of international awards. In the University of Pennsylvania’s Global Go To Think Tank Index Report 2018, the CMCC was ranked 91st in the Top 100 Non-US Institutions, 160th in the World Ranking, 94th in the Top Environment Policy Think Tanks Ranking, and 82nd among the Best Independent Think Tanks.

On the other hand, it remains to be demonstrated that the CMCC has managed to hit the second target: to become an institutional point of reference for public decision-makers, institutions, public and private companies who need technical-scientific support to face the climate emergency. But in this case the responsibilities must be sought in Italian politics, very little attracted by the idea of ​​relying on scientific advisers to decide long-term strategies. Because science can often tell uncomfortable truths, even obvious ones but that no one would like to hear, a bit like the child who screams “the king is naked”. Yet the opportunities are not lacking. Think of the Pnac, the National Plan for Adaptation to Climate Change, and the Pniec, the National Energy and Climate Plan, fundamental documents because they will have to outline the Italian mitigation and adaptation policies for the decades to come.

“In the case of the Pnac”, says Valentini, “we managed to make a contribution. But it is true that politics, not only in Italy, always has difficulty in handling climate measures based on the opinions of scientists. And yet in recent years something has changed: I see in the Palace a greater awareness of what science could do for the country”.

Yet we still witness scenes in which the scientist publicly addresses politics, which perhaps applauds him and then lets his words fall on deaf ears. It happened, for example, a few weeks ago in the Chamber of Deputies, in a conference dedicated to the Pniec, when Francesco Bosello, coordinator of the Economic Analysis and Climate Impact Division of the CMCC, took the floor. Numbers in hand, he explained that “if we want to stay within the limits of 1.5 ° C we must reach the peak of greenhouse gas emissions by 2025 and then drastically reduce them”. And that a lot of money would be saved if damages were prevented: “Until 2015 there was a belief that the damages caused by climate change would be seen from 2050 onwards. Recently it has emerged that the damages are higher and happen more quickly. An effective plan would allow Italy to avoid damage equal to 2% of GDP by 2050”. That the ecological transition can be an opportunity for growth and not a bloodbath: “Achieving the EU goal of cutting emissions by 55% by 2030 could lead to an increase in employment (currently estimated at 330,000 jobs) and growth (0,000 5% of GDP). Finally that, in the light of all this, “talking about Italy as a ‘European gas hub’ is not far-sighted”. In the expectation (and in the hope) that politics will implement it, the CMCC scientists continue to do their job: research of excellence.

The most relevant recent studies concern marine heat waves in the Mediterranean, the map of extreme events in Italy, a guide for G7 leaders on how to align trade policies with climate and economic objectives, a global map of aridity, the impacts of drought on agricultural production, the monitoring of the Italian transport system to reduce emissions and energy consumption, the safety of airports in the era of climate change.
“I think the report on climate change in Italian cities is particularly interesting“, comments Valentini, “because for the first time we have a picture of the situation in those places where most people will live in the future. And another important contribution is the one on seasonal and decadal forecasts. The 6-day weather forecast helps us decide whether or not to plan a picnic. But for economic activities, data over longer periods are needed”. imagine the scenarios at ten years it can help policy makers, for example.

“They are difficult predictions to make because special algorithms and computing powers are needed. Our Bologna-based group has made great progress and has obtained recognition from the international scientific community”.
Under the blue sky of Lecce, the CMCC is an anomalous research center: it has no laboratories where experiments are carried out. It is a laboratory itself. “We have turned the pyramid upside down” confirms Valentini. “Science has always been organized by disciplines: physics, mathematics, biology… But the climate crisis has forced us to start from the problem rather than from the individual disciplines: given the complex problem we have to solve we put together all the skills and talents that are needed. This is the CMCC’s winning strategy today, which perhaps it should also be exported to universities, where we still too often think about distinct and separate subjects”.