The first degree in Italy where the climate and its crisis is studied is in Bologna. “We want to guide politics in making the right choices”

Outside the windows of the Department of Physics and Astronomy of Bologna you can glimpse flowers and buds already in bloom well before the arrival of spring. Inside the classrooms, a handful of students are in class for this too: to fully understand the dynamics of the new climate, which between high temperatures and intense weather phenomena is upsetting lives, economies and ecosystems.

They are the first students – about thirty in total – enrolled in the first “Science of Climate” master’s degree course, a sort of large climate school unique in its kind in Italy. It was born in the midst of the pandemic and the lessons began in 2022: a two-year journey to train climate experts who in the future could be crucial in finding solutions and implementing adaptation and mitigation policies to global warming. Those who signed up for this interclass course, born under the banner of the departments of Physics and Astronomy and Biological, Geological and Environmental Sciences, come mainly from the world of scientific disciplines, such as physics.

Lessons in English

The lessons are all in English, we study topics ranging from atmospheric physics to geology, the use of data, hydrology, weather models, artificial intelligence applied to the climate up to the risks for banks and insurance companies. But there are also exams dedicated to the climate of other planets, satellite observations, the consequences of global warming on the economy. The spectrum is really broad, everything is connected with the climate.

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The teachers returned from the USA and Australia

“For the first time in a degree course everything revolves around the climate and its crisis” explain the professors Giovanni Liguori and Salvatore Pascale, both of whom returned, after years of training in Australia for the first and in the USA for the second, to do research in Bologna and to train “experts and authoritative voices who, from predictions to solutions, can help us face the emergency”. It means that with the skills acquired the graduates will be able “thanks to the models to help farmers to better understand the advantages and risks for certain crops”, they will support the administrators of coastal cities in “evaluating the effects of the rise”, they will dialogue with economic institutes or even , by reading the data, they will be able to preventively calculate the impacts of floods or extreme events.

“We want to guide politics towards making the right choices”

Or, strengthened by a preparation based on science, guide politics in making the right choices. This is for example the dream of Davide Livieri, 24 years old, who in a few months will be among the first to graduate in Science of Climate. “On a trip to Australia I was struck by how the acidification of the oceans has devastated the coral reefs – he says -. I started studying, but I also want to do more: for this reason in the second year I chose a more economical profile, because I am convinced that to deal with emissions and overheating today we already have 70% of the technologies to solve the crisis, the problem is that there is a lack of political decisions”.

Giacomo Giuliani, 23 years old, has just returned from British Columbia to Canada, given that the climate school also allows you to train abroad. “I am curious by nature. I want to deepen my knowledge of extreme weather phenomena, of how they will affect even on a small scale. It concerns mine and everyone’s future. The data tells us something that is irrefutable: this crisis is linked to the action of ‘man and man, also through research, has the duty to remedy it.”

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All the pupils say they are worried about the current rise in temperatures. That there is a need to talk about it more, but in a scientific way: a communication that, with the help of a professor-actor, is also taught in class.

The aim is always to put the climate crisis at the centre, “which I aim to understand thanks to the study of air circulation, models and also and above all artificial intelligence” says twenty-two year old Arnaldo Bartoli, whose dream is become a climatologist.

He echoes him Simone Schiavon, 26 years old, future “traveling scientist”, arrived at the master’s degree because “he was interested in the causes that lead to climate change. And to discover them, I hope, thanks to this training, to be able to travel the world”. For the university the dream is that in Bologna where the CMCC (Mediterranean center on climate change), the Isac-Cnr, Italia Meteo and the supercomputing center are based, high-level experts equipped with all the necessary weapons can be born to find solutions to heating.

The foundations are there but, as the professor comments Federico Porcùcoordinator of the course, “we would also need rooms and housing solutions, which are lacking here. Interest in the study of the climate is also starting to grow among foreign students in Bologna, but just as we must prepare for the new climate, as a city we must also let us be ready to host anyone who wants to study it”.