Extreme Weather Events and Scientific Research

The catastrophic flood by which a huge area of Emilia-Romagna region (northern Italy) was affected last May is the most recent out of a long queue of extreme weather events involving the Italian territory throughout the last 13 years. When dealing with extreme weather phenomena, representing nowadays a "minimum common denominator" worldwide, global warming should be kept into a special account, given that the highest mean temperatures on Earth in the last 140 years have been recorded between 2015 and 2022. This implies that consistent financial investments are needed to adequately cope with extreme weather events in Italy as well as in many other countries, thereby adopting an ad hoc "mind and paradigm change" and through a multidisciplinary, basic and applied, "One Health"-inspired research effort. To this aim, we should firmly keep in mind that the money sums invested in "prevention" are exceedingly lower than those spent for the "therapy" of natural disasters.